#probably because I color pixel per pixel in some parts

[tsukagari]

After a shower and ate a hamburger

I finally end my shitty paint lineart

Now I just need color it

#iruma suzuki #m!ik #iruma #welcome to demon school iruma kun #mairimashita iruma kun #mairuma #love that looks like pixek art #probably because I color pixel per pixel in some parts #because I erased it accidentaly

[borzoilover69]

Tips and Tricks for krita (part two electric boogaloo)

Ok so this one is going to be a doozy because im going to include a lot of examples and tips for how to use filters (AKA YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND)

Link to part one.

Ok so filters in krita can be a doozy so ill cover the ones i use in my art the most, these will be adjust, artistic, and enhance dropdowns. I will be using my art pieces to show how i modify my art- colourwise!

Obviously, start off with opening the filter menu up. Color balance brings you to this menu, where you can play around with the colour of your shadows, your midtones, and higlights. Its a lot of trial and error, just messing around to see what fits, and its how i got to this point. through just pushing the dials up and down. Honestly, a lot of this part of the tutorial is going to be me telling you to hit those dials and levers like you dont know nobody.

Even just small modifications as you can see can play so much of a difference. For here, i upped the cool tones for john, and upped the warm ones for dave. Colour theory without colour theorising i suppose you could say.

Crosschannel adjustment curves can help with contrast and colour intensity. Usually i have one point which i use to move up and down per my whims to control how bright my work is, and it can really help with really bringing out those colours so it doesnt all fall into one hue. Colour adjustment curves works similiarly, play around with them to get the desired effect.

Krita also has HSV adjustment, but i usually use just the hue and saturation. Theyre pretty self explanatory, and can switch up your palette in pretty fun ways.

Now we move on to the ARTISTIC part. Again, i recommend you play around with them yourself, but i find index colours works really well for making really pretty art really fast! You just put in a few colours with descending lightest to darkest and you get an awesome art piece! Id say this is useful for pixel artists, but also useful for other parties. I might just start using this more myself. Its so easy wtf.

AND FINALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.

HOW MY ART IS SO CRUNCHY.

If youve been following me for a while you probably noticed theres a slight crunch to my art. It gives it a slight bit of texture and makes it noticable. How do i do it?

You're welcome.

insert image of face on 90% opacity and comedic text for purpose.

Alternatively, if youre looking for a sbahj level of crunchiness, smack that "mean removal"for some fun.

Thats all! Happy drawing.

#art tutorial #borzoi talks

[ribbononline]

I absolutely love the sprites you've been posting! They're so good! Do you have any tips for spriting? I'd like to get better at it, but it's not easy :'D

Thank you so much! and oh my god im so sorry for how long this took me to get to Truthfully infinite fusion helped a lot to get me into it myself haha. Not because of anything about the concept, but because it eased me into it with editing existing sprites. That way you don't have to do a lot at the start yourself yet, but you DO have to really look at how the shading is constructed to edit things together. Maybe hand draw a new leg or alter the expression a bit- again, not a ton of work, but it'll force you to deconstruct how the sprite was made to match the style!

That is probably THE best tip I can give to anyone. Find a (preferably somewhat simplistic- video game sprites r great here) style you like, and start off by working in that. Simple edits etc arent a big bang beginning, but theyre great for learning the basics.

Now for random tips I can have. Be mindful, these are just how I personally work ! Genuinely there are so many different styles and ways of working with pixel art as with any medium- you can break any rule and still have things come out amazing!

Dont worry as much about having distinct sketch/lineart/colors/shading phases. Technically you can work this way? But I find it makes me focus too much on how each individual phase looks when most of the time (at least for me) a sprite doesnt pull together until the very end. it WILL look slightly mad until then its simply part of the process. I tend to put a rough base with some beginning colors and then simply refine from there. wips vs finished attached below for visuals

Also, careful with stuff like dithering! It can be very fun , and some styles have a ton of it which works fine and can look good! But from what I can see at least in the IF disxord a lot of ppl will slap it on anytime anywhere at the start which makes things look... messy. I personally mostly use it for fabrics. (Also, get a dithering brush. Love yourself, dont do that by hand, especially on bigger sprites)

Limit your colors! This is a general tip and not tehcnically that important, but I find it really helps me.

I tend to stick to 3/4 shades per color max. Some of the darkest shades of a color can also be the lightest parts of the outline for that color! Pic below I used the browns not just for the hair, but also for the gold shading and for the darker parts of the skin. It just helps pull a pallete together easier when youre reusing it where you can.

Dont be afraid of using the outlines color to shade with either for dark shades btw ! It is fun it is fresh

Only real warning for outlines Ive got is to be careful of jaggies. Like the upper line reads 'smoother' then the lower one because the longer pixels all follow eachother gradually. Jaggies can be useful especially in folds and whatnot, but when something is supposed to look smooth or round- no jaggies usually show!

#not art #i hope any of this is useful at all KDHFSJD #IM SO BAD AT ADVICE IM SORRY

[3ofpents]

100 Palette Challenge // Palette #23 // Picturesque Point Pleasant

Today's color palette comes from a "Picture-Play Magazine" cover from April 1922.

This poster actually came together pretty quickly! Or at least it felt quick. Honestly it felt like the longest part was looking up photos of Point Pleasant to reference (mostly because I was originally trying to not use the bridge, but you know, the palette limits me on options).

Oh but it came together even more quickly the SECOND time. Because I had to DRAW IT TWICE. Because normally when I create a new file for these posters, I set the unit of measurement to inches because it's easier to remember 11 x 17 inches than 585884239 pixels or whatever. But THIS time, I apparently accidentally set the unit to CENTIMETERS and I didn't notice until I went to resize it to post here! ┻━┻ ︵ ＼( °□° )／ ︵ ┻━┻

So anyway this is the SECOND poster. But that's okay, I was able to fix some of the things I didn't like about the original version and some of the tiny mistakes.

BUT YEAH, Point Pleasant, WV is the home of Mothman, probably the most popular cryptid in Cryptid Fandom. Nevertheless, I'm sure there's plenty of folks who aren't familiar, so here's a quick overview.

The first published Mothman sighting was in November of 1966 when two young married couples were chased around the backroads of Point Pleasant by what they described as a large winged man with muscular legs, no arms or head, and glowing red eyes. You can read more about that in my post about Mothman on the Shapeshifters tumblr, Like most cryptids, no one can quite agree on what Mothman is, even among the believers. There's speculation about it being a demon, due to its connection to the Silver Bridge collapse exactly 13 months to the day after the November '66 sighting. Others think it was trying to warn people about it, like John Keel who wrote the book The Mothman Prophesies that the later Richard Gere movie was based on. Though Keel also theorizes that Mothman is an alien, but also that aliens aren't from space, but from Earth and, at least when he originally wrote the book in 1975, spoke in a very condescending tone of anyone who still thought aliens were from space.

Personally, I'd never heard of Mothman until the Gere movie, which I went to see with my mom. She wasn't super interested in cryptids, but she has always been a fan of Richard Gere and absolutely loved those paranormal thrillers filmed like psychological thrillers that were so popular in the early 2000's. I've loved Mothman ever since and, I suppose since that was my introduction to him, I definitely fall on the side of him trying to warn people about the bridge collapse. And because of that he shares a place in my heart with Giles Corey, the only man tried and executed for witchcraft during the Salem with trials, whose ghost is also said to appear before great disasters in the graveyard where he was pressed to death .

I think I've come a long way from my very first cryptid poster. I don't know if this one is necessarily any better, per se, than the Jersey Devil poster, but the techniques are settling into my brain and muscle memory.

This poster is part of @shapeshiftersvt's Cryptid Collection. If you like it, prints will be up on the Shapeshifters website sometime this week (probably tomorrow). I'll reblog this post when they are.

#mothman #cryptids #art #artists on tumblr #west virginia #100 palettes challenge

[youre-only-gay-once]

your gifs are so good!! do you have any resources for getting started? for context I'm a dumbass with a netflix account and destiel brainworms. <3

Hi, thank you, that is so kind of you to say!

First step is getting stuff to turn into gifs (which is the hardest part for me personally)

This post has a lot of links, since you have netflix you could probably just screen record it. I've never torrented so I'm no help with that.

I usually cut bigger files into smaller files (built in video editor on your machine should work for this) and then use this site to cut those into the clips I want to gif. This site does only let you cut 5 clips per day, but if you open it in an incognito page, cut 5 clips, close incognito and then reopen it again you can get 5 clips as many times as you need. Also I have to turn the speed to 50% to get the clips to work.

For actually making the gifs I use Photopea which is basically a free open source in-browser version of photoshop. (Some people create a gif in ez-gif forst and then put it in photopea, I just put the clips straight in.)

This post explains the basics of photopea and this blog has a lot of very helpful tutorials and tips. (Some people create a gif in ez-gif first and then put it in photopea, I just put the clips straight in)

The specifics of how I usually make a gif are under the cut here

Open your video and find the clip you want, I try not to go over 3 seconds because any longer than that tends to make the finished gif be larger than tumblr can handle, you can always cut out frames in photopea if that happens though. (Also happy pride month to bi lighting Dean who's my gif subject today)

Go to the speed setting and set it to 50% and then save the clip

Go to Photopea > File > Open and then select the file

Leave the FPS set on 10.0, this is fine

So now it's open and I'm going to crop it to a 4:3 ratio (I don't always do this, it depends on the clip, some look better uncropped)

Now that he's cropped I'm going Image > Image Size and making the width 1000. this makes it sharpen much quicker.

Select all the frames (click the first one, hold down the shift key, and click the bottom one) and then go Filter > Sharpen > Smart sharpen

I usually sharpen twice (amount 150%, radius 1.0 and then .1) , add noise (amount 1, distribution: uniform, monochromatic) , and then sharpen again (amount 25%, radius 10.0 )

Now that the filters are done I just add some layers to change the color a bit (there's a lot of different stuff you can do with these, what you change is really a matter of personal taste)

Now I'm gonna change the width to 540, tumblr gifs are sized to 540 so you always want to do this so they fit right

Go to File > Export as > Gif

Make sure you press the dither button, this helps make the gif less pixelated, you can also change the speed if you want. After that save it

This is the gif with no edits but cropping vs. the sharpened, color edited gif

Happy gifmaking, I hope this helps you some!

#ask #spnedit #myspngifs #gif tutorial

[kaidenshenandoahknapp]

this was an absurd amount of effort for what was ultimately an offhanded-joke but i needed to procrasinate lmao

if you watched @henrykathman's "Melody of Moominvalley" stream, (hi, hello, i made the thumbnail art, that was a cool surprise to see in my sub-box lol) Kathman made a comment about being glad no one has made him into a Moomintroll (or Snorktroll, i guess) because he thinks he would look like Snork

i had two thoughts in reply to this VOD:

that's probably because i would assume most video-essayist are on the spectrum of Hemulans (oversimplification: academics) to Teety-Woo/Woodies (oversimplification: big fans, arguably obsessive). you're probably more of a Hemulan? based on how you present yourself in videos? idk, i dont know you in your personal life lmao Hemulan just seems likely considering the hobby being so analytical (and also is easier for me to look at the different styles of since Woodies seem to have less general rules towards their appearance. and Teety-Woo is the only one of its kind that i know of, idk what is Teety-Woo's species and what is Teety-Woo's individuality there. but, like, that's not nearly as fun as my bullshit quiz lmao)

fucking bet

*: assets in not-gif form below Read More

(psa: please do forgive me for misspellings. i am dyslexic and will probably edit this repeatedly for quite some time, but im tired atm so Now It Is Posted)

anyway, i whipped all these up in about 2 or 3 days? idk, my chronic health issues have been a monster lately, its hard to keep track of days rn

but i made:

comics Moomintroll/Snorktroll

90s Moomintroll/Snorktroll and Hemulan

Tales From Moominvalley inspired illustration art of Hemulan where it has those lifeless "bug eyes with tiny pupils" style i love (but that i also understand why Jansson went back and gave them bigger pupils after a certain edition, and drew with more expressive eyes after a while)

why did i do three different styles + 3 different species? because i was torn on which to do and ended up pulling a classic Kaiden-Shenandoah and going "ill do more work and let them choose which one they like best". something something anxiety, i dont know what to tell you, im trying to learn self-acceptance lmao besides, it was fun to do a quicker shuft through style changes than the usual heavier studying i make Google Images help me do

speaking of, i dont often share my references because i worry about clutter, but i want to include it today and i also used less ref than usual, so you get clutter lol

(i learned last time that Tove Jansson doesn' often draw mugs; so i did my best guesses based on the references here + the result of my references the last time i drew in Jansson' style, which was more so her later novel-illustrations, if i remember right, as opposed to today. lots of best guesses today.)

first of all, i guessed on Kathman's eye-color based on zooming in and it was too pixelated to tell for sure even with the eyedropped tool. secondly, very fun tying in the blue hair dye since 90s Snork has a pink edge to his hair and Mr Hemulan has a green edge to his. last of all: i made them with (and without) a light beard/stubble, since i saw Kathman has one now. but also that was enirely guesswork on my part: Tove Jansson drew heavy-duty moustaches/beards or completely facially-hairless characters, no in-between. so i used educated guesses on how to adapt that. and i feel a bit like i did the male version of that one Snorkmaiden lipstick comic for my efforts lmao but hey! i tried!

my only thing is idk which set to upload to instagram, bc doing all the assets of with/out facial hair feels oddly excessive and maybe goes past instagram's images-per-post limit, idk, ill upload these there someday i guess. really wish instagram would let me post a gif but idk how to do that. c'est la vie

you also may notice one of the Hemulan sets includes a magnifying glass. i just thought it was thematically appropriate for someone analytical, especially since one of my references above did have it available for me to also reference lol

as a fun detail, i did a more Police Inspector color palette for the 90s Hemulan design, and a more Moominpappa palette for the 90s Moomintroll/Snorktroll designs. hence why those colors aren't the same

and the last thing is that i made the comic assets yellow-y to reflect the aging of paper and the quality of the photo references i have. (Henry Kathman, if you want to edit them to be white for the aesthetic of something, feel totally free)

here's all the assets i made in total. the gif version felt the most succint but yeah. also, Henry Kathman, if you are reading this: same rules apply. feel free to use these in anything you want, credit would be nice. (also, very sweet that you saw my name change away from my childhood nickname, i appreciate that 🫶). credit in the future can be to either here or my instagram (which i changed to match this hyphen-less url, since tumblr terminated my last blog for unknown reasons) i hope you are not upset that i went against your wishes of gratitude that nobody had drawn you as a Moomintroll/Snorktroll, but i hope the fact that i think you don't look like Snork even as a Moomintroll/Snorktroll helps. i hope you also dont mind the Hemulan additions lmao. but yeah, i wont blame you if you prefer the more human (or arguably Mymble? idk species) style i did beforehand in the last batch and don't use these. that one has way more references with lots of drafts and this is more of me messing around and finalizing the first draft i made each time around lol but i think they came out fun! very silly distraction, thanks for the idea lmao

thanks to Henry Kathman for the fun VOD and the much-(un)needed procrastination excuse. it was a good distraction from a pretty bad flare-up in my disability and a full plte of things to do that i needed an escape from. hope youre having a great day!

#my art #henry kathman #me #moomin #moomin valley #hemulans

[browngomez62]

Locked Phones - What to Look for in A Locked Phone

After years of ignoring the phone as part of our gadget collection, the humble mobile phone has taken over the world. In 2018, there have been over 229 million global smartphone subscriptions, and over 1 billion monthly active users on YouTube, based on Statista.

With the prevalence of smartphones comes the opportunity to get one for much less. Because of technological advances and the decline of the standard landline, shopping for a cell phone does not need to be as expensive as it once was. In this text, we'll tell you about the best sites to buy Celulares Barato on-line.

How Much Does A Phone Cost?

It's a common question, how a lot does a cellphone value? The quick reply is that the price of a phone varies by producer, model, and color, nevertheless it mostly depends on two things; the amount of storage you will have and how massive the screen is. You might also want to consider the price of a knowledge plan as effectively.

In case you are searching for a cellphone that you'll use occasionally, you can find great offers occasionally. In particular, the Google Pixel 3a and 3a XL with 64GB of storage are at present promoting for underneath $400 from varied retailers, together with Walmart, Best Buy, and Target. Remember that these are finest purchase deals, so you may need to do some comparison shopping to seek out the best value.

Where Can I Buy A Phone?

In most cases, you will need to determine whether or not to buy an unlocked telephone or one that you'll have to pay for each month. If you're looking for a cellphone that you'll use mainly within the United States, it's best to get an unlocked machine, as most mobile phones are area locked. This fashion, you should use any service service supplier in the country and not fear about whether or not your telephone will work internationally.

If you are on the lookout for a locked cellphone, you will have to contemplate what service you'll use and how much you'll must spend on your plan. Some carriers, reminiscent of T-Mobile and U-Verse, offer telephones bundled with limitless data plans for customers, which could make them desirable choices for many who want to stay cell each month.

The professionals And Cons Of An Unlocked Phone.

If you're searching for a phone that you will use mainly in the United States, you'll benefit from buying an unlocked phone. This way, you should utilize any provider service provider within the nation and never fear about whether or not your cellphone will work internationally. An unlocked cellphone also allows you to alter the SIM card with out having to buy a brand new gadget. Most service service suppliers provide nice coverage, and with competitors driving value reductions, it is perhaps time for a wireless cellphone improve.

One of many cons of an unlocked telephone is that you'll have to buy one that is compatible with the nations' carriers. If you are undecided which one to purchase, check out a number of SIM cards in your space before making a purchase order choice. This can enable you to avoid surprises when touring abroad.

Where Can I Buy A Phone With Global Coverage?

If you're determined to buy a telephone that you're going to use internationally, keep in thoughts that you'll need to look into shopping for one that is area unlocked. This can allow you to use any SIM card in any country and not have cellular service dropouts. There are also a number of unlocked phones which have nice international protection, so you don't have to fret about being restricted to specific service networks.

The above graph from GAPPS exhibits the common monthly value of a cellphone plan globally, together with the total cost of proudly owning a phone throughout three years. The data used in this analysis includes the average revenue per user (ARPU) for a cellular company in each nation. To put this in perspective, one of the least expensive international locations is Montenegro on the list with an ARPU of $7 per month. Probably the most costly nation is Afghanistan with a median income per consumer of $39 monthly.

There aren't any precise figures out there for what number of mobile phones are in use worldwide, but the above stats ought to offer you an concept of the prevalence of smartphones at this time. With the prevalence of smartphones, the opportunity to get one for less has arrived, and that is something we will all profit from.

#Celulares Barato

[1kook]

ZOOM CALL

⇢ meeting one

jeon jungkook x (f) reader

⇢ series masterlist

summary: In a sea of black screens and faceless names, there’s one smiley boy that beams back at you through the dimly lit screen of your laptop, a tiny Jeon Jungkook (he/him) tacked to the corner of his window. genre: fluff, slice of life, smut (tags tba) warnings: jk is a ditzy lil nerdy sweetheart, college crushes, social distancing -_-, use of the zoom app, 1kook Builds a Healthy Relationship (Version 2.0) ratings: M (18+) wc: 3.2k

notes: well. here we are. as always i have to thank common sense (coincidentally named rumu @kigurumu​ ) for reading this over and pointing out little details <3 after much deliberation, i have decided to post our beloved zoom jk (see origin story here) in the form of short ‘drabbles’ depicting diff zoom calls with this being The Beginning™️ so please... bare with me </3 ty to all the nice ppl who have been excited for this, luv u very much 🥺

There are times in human history where words captivate their audience; times when single words or phrases wrap around the listener, melt into their bones and radiate warmth from within. But rarely does one word manage such an impact, rarely is it as revered and as cherished as the word cancelled is to most college students. 

Class is cancelled, group meetings are cancelled, the stupidly big semester final project was cancelled. You could cancel nearly anything, and in most cases, it would be beautiful. Cancelled meant more time to sleep in the morning, an afternoon free of pesky project partners, a pleasant reprieve from having to socialize with anyone. It was a glorious word with heavenly connotations that brought tears of joy to your eyes whenever you saw it appear in an email preview.

Except this one.

Spring Semester 2021: On-Campus Classes CANCELLED — Social Distance Measures as per State Regula…

Your last semester as a student in university… online? You couldn’t believe it. All these years of studying rigorously, cramming for exams, attaining a near perfect GPA— just to sit in your bedroom and stare at your computer screen for the last 15 weeks of classes? Had your friends not been there to mope with you, you’re certain a part of you would have gone on a rampage and cursed every bacteria known to mankind for doing this to you.

It was your last year, you whined in private (never in public; your friends had always considered you the mature one, the studious friend who kept everyone in order), yet here you were, setting up your desk for your last ever first day of classes with quite possibly the biggest pout on your face.

Zoom, your school had raved in an email a few weeks into the break, the desktop application that will keep us united in these trying times! As if, you huffed, giving the stupid application permission to connect to your computer’s camera and audio systems. What even was proper Zoom etiquette? Did you have to enter the meeting and greet every student cheerfully? You had always said hi to your classmates before, but something about saying it over a computer mic felt awkward.

The feeling doubled when you finally entered the meeting, only to be met with a sea of black screens save for your professor, who seemed to be clicking around his computer in a rather confused fashion. This was going to suck, you thought bitterly.

You had entered the room ten minutes earlier because, well, you always showed up to class a few minutes earlier than the scheduled meeting time. But was there any point to doing that here? Usually, the time before class was spent making small talk with said classmates, discussing the readings or the assignments, talking mindlessly about whatever came to mind. But something in your gut said it would be weird to do that now.

So you sit in silence for the next ten minutes, nervously tapping your pen against your desk as you wait for the professor to launch into whatever introductory monologue he had planned. You toy with your phone, scrolling through your twitter feed only to see a brigade of tweets from students all over the nation suffering the same fate as you. It was a trending topic.

Two minutes before the class starts, you hear the tell-tale ping of someone entering the meeting. You wave it off just like you have your other 41 classmates thus far, but then there’s the clearing of a throat, and a sweet, “good morning” filtering through your speakers. Lifting your head from the hunched over position you had assumed while glancing at your phone, you’re startled by the sudden handsome face that appears before you.

In a sea of black screens and faceless names, there’s one smiley boy that beams back at you through the dimly lit screen of your laptop, a tiny Jeon Jungkook (he/him) tacked to the corner of his window.

He’s nothing short of a dreamboat, soft and doughy cheeks that catch the hue of the screen light, highlighting his cheekbones in a faint blue color. Imploring doe eyes blinking widely at the screen as he clicks around, narrating his confusion in a low mumble (mic still on, how cute). Dark hair— was it brown? black? the pixelated screen made it hard to tell —messily pushed away from his face.

And his voice, oh his voice. It matches his gentle appearance perfectly. A soft snort. “Am I the only one here?” he says, thin lips pulled to the side in a bashful grin.

The professor laughs with him. “No, but you are the only one with your camera on,” he responds.

You’re not sure if it’s the professor’s teasing jab at literally everyone else or the need to support the cutie who smiles softly at screen, but suddenly, a handful of windows come to life. Your classmates fill up the screen, dressed in an array of styles with bedrooms (and, on the rare occasion, dorm rooms) to match. You nibble at your bottom lip, finger hovering over the button that will expose your appearance to the rest of your classmates

Eventually, the wordless peer pressure, the need to be a good student, and the supportive face of Jeon Jungkook (he/him) have you inhaling sharply before dutifully clicking the camera on. Your face appears on screen, nearly lost in the now overwhelming sea of faces. You’re one of the last ones to turn your camera on, both pages of your zoom meeting participant windows filled with the contrasting images of your classmates joining from their bedrooms. The professor claps in delight, and finally dives into the mandatory first day of classes spiel.

Syllabuses, group work, asynchronous lectures. You’ve heard these words all before, have practically memorized this class’s syllabus like the back of your hand. The pros of being an overachiever. The cons are, however, that you think every question your classmates ask is stupid. Read the syllabus, you want to scream. But it’s the first day of class. You don’t even know who your assigned study group partners (as mentioned in the syllabus) are and you certainly don’t want them to dislike you so soon. They can do that after the third meeting, but not today.

You’re not entirely surprised when your attention drifts away from the professor and the endless sea of stupid questions he’s left to answer. Even when you realize you’ve stopped paying attention, you don’t bother forcing yourself to tune back in. No, instead your focus drifts across the windows of faces.

Some of your classmates are as bored as you, glaring at the screen with disinterest, or glancing off to the side probably at their phones. So you start looking at their rooms, analyzing their decorations and posters as if you’re a professional critic on some house design show.

Jeon Jungkook (he/him) is in a rather plain dorm room. Plain light gray walls— or maybe it’s white —free of decoration. He’s sitting at the provided desk, just like you. The only reason you focus on that is because there’s a multitude of your classmates lazily sprawled across their beds, slumped over a couch. Hardly anyone is sitting at attention like you. Well, except for Jeon Jungkook (he/him). He’s practically exposing the entirety of his living accommodation with the way his camera is set up.

Above eye level, reaching just below his chest, with the room all laid out before you. A neat twin bed, sheets meticulously made. It almost looks like the decorative set at a furniture store with the way the comforter and variety of pillows are placed. He doesn’t seem to be in the crappy dorms you remember, which leaves you wondering where exactly he’s been assigned. You know certain sports clubs get fancier dormitories. Anyway, there’s a door off the side of the bed, a black guitar standing in the corner just behind it. You wonder what’s behind the camera, if maybe his desk is as organized as the rest of his room. Maybe his closet is his weakness, you muse, imagining poor Jeon Jungkook (he/him) with a tornado of a closet. But the thought doesn’t make that much sense, so you discard it quickly.

Anyway, his dorm room. It’s neat and orderly, makes you tilt your head curiously as he swivels from side to side before you. As for himself, he’s dressed in a plain white sweater, hoodie strings perfectly even. His hair has long since fallen over his forehead, but he’s pushed it over this time in a fluffy side part. He was adorably soft.

He’s paying attention to the professor like he genuinely treasures every word that comes off his tongue, nodding along understandingly. He’s even got a pencil in hand, leaning forward every few seconds to scribble something down hurriedly. Not like this is all on the syllabus or anything, you think.

But as soon as the thought crosses your mind, it’s dispelled just as fast. He’s only trying to be a good student, you scold yourself, feeling oddly mean for wanting to make fun of this sweet boy. Especially when he raises his hand a second later and asks the first good question of the day. Something about the grading scale for group projects and how much is determined by the group members themselves. You’re not too sure, the words get a little fuzzy when he starts speaking and his pink lips pull down into an endearing pout.

A couple minutes later and your professor finally wraps up the questions, telling everyone to email him if any other questions arise throughout the semester. Just as you’re sighing in relief, he utters those dreaded words: “Ice-breakers!” he exclaims, and the whole class grimaces, much to his amusement. He says something about feeling the excitement through the screen, but then changes gears. “Since it’s a little hard to talk to your neighbor, I’m going to test out the Breakout Rooms and see how that works, okay guys?”

You frown. Breakout Rooms? What on earth was that? Like most of your classmates, this is pretty much your first rodeo with the Zoom application. He was sending you all into small groups, where? The answer presents itself a few seconds later, a message box appearing on your screen.

The host is inviting you to join a Breakout Room: Group 4

Your professor is still chattering in the background when you nervously accept the invitation, his voice suddenly cut off as your computer jumps to a new loading screen. It takes a while before you’re suddenly dumped into a new room. And then you’re staring at your own face, blown up on your own screen in a rather uncomfortable way. Jeez, did you really look like this?

As soon as you get to picking at your appearance, your mirrored reflection jumps to the side, once, then twice more to fit the three new guests in your room. Silence fills your bedroom as you and your classmates all stare at each other nervously for a couple seconds, unsure of what to say. This was, after all, your first meeting.

Just as you’ve gathered all your courage to click your microphone on, the screen jumps around once more and suddenly Jeon Jungkook (he/him) is in your Breakout Room. Immediately, his surprised face melts into the most reassuring grin you’ve ever seen, and he’s practically jumping forward to turn his mic on.

“Good morning, everyone,” he says, smooth and low. It’s like the awkward tension melts away under the pressure of his pretty smile, your classmates responding back with polite hellos and good mornings to him. You barely get yours in before Jeon Jungkook (he/him) starts talking again. “So… how are you guys?”

His words, sweet and caring as they are, send the five of you into a rather mindless conversation. Talking about nothing really, just whatever comes to mind about the class, about the semester, about the remote learning. Then Jungkook— “just Jungkook is fine!” he tells the other four of you with that same too pure look on his face after someone refers to him by his whole name —starts talking about some movie he had seen on Netflix the other day, something his friend recommended to him. Truthfully, you have zero interest in the type of plot he is describing, and you can tell some of the other people in your group don’t either. But he’s absorbed in his storytelling, features lit up as he details every last plot point of the film like his life depends on it. There’s a wordless agreement to let him ramble on.

By the time Jungkook has finished his novella recapture of whatever movie he was talking about, a green message bubble appears at the top of your screen. It’s a message from your professor, who is telling you the small group meeting will end in a few more minutes.

“Aw, that sucks,” Jungkook laughs, rubbing at the back of his neck sheepishly. And then, “oh! We haven’t answered our icebreaker question yet!”

Ah, yes. The reason for this small group was to get to know each other, not for Jungkook to recount an entire two hour movie for you all. “Oh, right,” you agree, probably the first words you’ve said in the past five minutes. You navigate to the chat box, where your professor had hastily dumped the question before sending you all off. “What’s one thing you miss most about being on campus?” you read aloud, glancing back at the screen.

Your group mates are all in various states of blissful comfort, the gaps of their nervousness smoothed over by Jungkook’s bubbly personality, and the hesitation they’d shown at the beginning is practically gone. Someone steps forward and says something about the campus dining hall. Jungkook laughs, loud and airy, claps his hands all cute too. Someone else says the library because it was a good place to study. There’s a lull and you jump in quickly. “I think I’ll miss the couches by the gym in the student center the most,” you confess, though you doubt anyone knows which ones you mean. They were a set of brightly colored couches tucked into a cranny behind the Starbucks just outside the campus gym, avidly avoided by the gym rats who were determined to ignore the sugary drinks and snacks.

Apparently, the hiding spot isn’t as secretive as you thought. “Oh, the ones by the Starbucks?” Jungkook exclaims, excitedly looking at his screen. You have this fluttery feeling that he’s looking at you for the first time. You nod, and he quite positively beams. “I love those!”

“Yeah, I spend a lot of time there,” you say, though it’s a little stilted because you’re not exactly sure how you’re supposed to react to Jungkook’s enthusiasm. Though his outgoing personality cloaks you in comfort, his pretty smile has your heartbeat acting a little funny.

Jungkook’s got these huge eyes, blinking owlishly at you. “Really? So do I!” And then you both seem to have the same realization. His head tilts to the side cutely, an amused smile on his face, “I’ve never seen you there.”

“I’ve never seen you there,” you shoot back, a little snarkier than necessary, but Jungkook doesn’t seem to notice. His smile turns goofy.

“Woah,” he says in a rather dreamy tone, “isn’t that so cool? We spent so much time in the same place, but never crossed paths before,” he babbles. He’s stopped looking at his computer, leaning back in a sort of dazed manner with this sparkly look to his eyes, much to everyone’s amusement. Except yours, because frankly, it sounds a little bit like he’s describing— “fate!” he says suddenly, like it’s truly an aha! moment. He pauses, taps his finger against his chin. “Or anti-fate? I’m not sure. But it’s like— we could’ve met so many times before and we didn’t.” Doe eyes return to the screen, flickering around until they presumably land on you again. “What do you think, __?”

And he’s just so cute, makes the rigid shield around your chest soften for the slightest moment as you nod meekly. “Uhh, yeah. Fate,” you agree, and then get to hear him laugh and giggle for about three seconds before you’re suddenly thrown back into the larger Zoom meeting.

Weirdly flustered, you hurriedly click your microphone back off, and nearly contemplate the camera too. But then the professor is asking you all to share what you talked about and you’re resigning yourself to a few more minutes of screen time while the class wraps up. By the looks of it, not everyone had as an enjoyable time as you did. Part of you is thankful you didn’t get stuck in an awkward small group. The other part recognizes wholeheartedly that it’s all thanks to one smiley boy at the bottom of your screen.

“And group 4?” the professor asks, and you blink yourself back into attention. Before you can unmute yourself and answer for your group, Jungkook is beating you to it.

“We talked about a lot of things,” Jungkook answers cheerfully. From your view, you get a front row seat to the sheer power of Jungkook’s magnetic personality, watching as all your listless classmates suddenly snap back from their daydreams to zero in on whatever Jungkook is saying. He fills in the professor about what you talked about, from the movies to the couches, and you feel weirdly mushy when his eyes flicker across the screen before settling with a soft smile.

He can’t possibly be looking at me, you tell yourself. Your hand jerks forward to turn the camera off, but in your haste, end up knocking down the water bottle on your desk. You scramble to straighten it, thanking the universe for the fact you actually remembered to screw on the cap. You glance back at the screen, and nearly die when you catch sight of a giggly Jungkook, smile hidden behind an adorable sweater paw as he laughs at something on screen. Oh no, was he looking at me? you panic.

“Alright, everyone,” your professor says in that “I’m about to wrap this class up” voice. Too close to the screen, voice a little too loud. “Good meeting today, I’ll see you all again on Wednesday. Stay safe.”

“Bye!” Jungkook sings sweetly, and everyone else follows as they all bid adieu to the professor. Still a little frazzled from the possibility that Jungkook may have watched you flail around like a total loser, you take a second longer to turn your mic on. Your classmates quickly leave the meeting, leaving only a few stragglers until the very end.

Surprisingly, Jungkook is here too, brown eyes focused on the screen. You unmute yourself. “Um,” you stammer, eyes unwillingly flickering over to Jungkook who smiles at the sound of your voice. “Goodbye. Thank you,” you rush out, and then quickly leave the meeting as well.

With the meeting over, you’re left staring at the home page of the Zoom app, heart beating a little too fast to be normal. Your face feels warm, and your fingers tremble from some unfamiliar, giddy feeling in your chest. You exhale slowly, hand coming up to rub at your chin as if that will somehow explain the weird excitement from your Zoom meeting. Maybe it was just adrenaline, or nervousness, you try to convince yourself. After all, the first day of classes is always nerve-wracking.

Except when you navigate to your class page and begin to mindlessly scroll through the class roster, there’s a weird stutter to your heartbeat when you catch sight of that Jeon Jungkook (he/him) that appears halfway down the list.

Copyright © 2020, 1kook on tumblr. absolutely NO reposts allowed.

#bangtanhq #networkbangtan #jungkook smut #jungkook fic #jeon jungkook smut #jeon jungkook fic #jjk smut #jeon jungkook x reader #jjk♡ #jjk fic #bts smut #bts fic #mine

[fatoujallovv]

so here’s my disclaimer: I hardly know what I'm doing. This is my glued together homemade giffing method that I’ve created over months of just random experimentation and bits and pieces from all kinds of tutorials. there are probably better or more correct ways to do a lot of these things! this also isn’t a completely universal tutorial, some of the specifics are geared towards giffing skam, specifically skam france. 

I gif in photoshop cc 2020 on a macbook. Some things like keyboard shortcuts and little things about the photoshop interface will probably vary if you are on a pc/ other version of photoshop! 

this is very long and very unprofessional, but I hope there is something in here that someone will find helpful!

we’ll be going from this:

to this:

up to date as of October 25, 2020

downloading clips

selecting what part you’re going to gif

cropping

my action for resizing, converting to a smart object, and sharpening

coloring

exporting and setting the delay

tldr tips

1. downloading clips

4k video downloader (which you can get for mac or pc here) is great for things posted to youtube, especially from skam france because all the clips are on their youtube with no weird geoblocks or anything! it’s really easy, you just have to open the clip in youtube, copy the link, and go into the program and hit paste link. I like to put on smart mode first and set the destination folder so all my clips go into the place I want. 

There is a 30 video per day download limit, so if you’re thinking you really want to gif lots of stuff from the show, and want a big chunk or a full season it’s definitely worth hunting for a mega or google drive with full episodes to download because it’s just less hassle! I might come back to this post later and compile a list of all of those, but for now if you type “[remake] no subs google drive” or “[remake] no subs mega” into a google search, you’ll probably find something! the all of skam website has no subs for several remakes, but not all!

If you don’t have enough space on your computer to be keeping full seasons, I know there are methods to get screencaps without having to download (generally for giffing movies and regular tv I think this is a common method), but I’ve never done it so I’ll redirect you to this tutorial that explains it! you should probably just go there for the whole thing tbh it’s much more coherent than this, but I digress. 

2. selecting the piece of the video you want to gif

now that you’ve got your episode or clip you’ll want to just open it in photoshop! if you go the screen capping route the way to do that is a bit wonky, so you can keep following the tutorial I linked above and join back in here at coloring if you like!

if the timeline at the bottom doesn’t pop up automatically you can go to window > timeline and turn it on! now you can use the scrubber bar thing to find the moment you want to gif! 

The advantage of this over screen capping is you can scrub with more precision. the arrows circled in blue below let you jump only one frame, where in screen capping I'm pretty sure you can only go by ten second or one minute intervals. 

I usually drag the scrubber as close as I can to the start of the shot/moment I want to use, fiddle with the arrows circled in blue below to jump forward or back one frame at a time until I'm at the first frame I want. I move the left grey handle to the scrubber and then I hit the play button and let the whole shot/moment play. Pause and repeat the shuffling with the arrows until you’ve landed on the last frame you want to use and move the other grey handle. 

the moment you want to use should be between your handles (it’ll look like what I have circled in red), and if you hit play, you should see the thing you want to gif playing on loop above the timeline. the speed will probably be weird, but we’ll deal with that at the end. 

now I recommend doing command or control + s to save your gif as a psd (photoshop document). this is a working, editable file which means if photoshop crashes you can open your file right back up and keep working as long as you’re hitting command or control + s at regular intervals as you work. later we’ll go through exporting in gif format that can actually be uploaded to tumblr.

3. cropping

next I crop out any logos or black space at the top and bottom. Just click on the crop tool on the lefthand side of the screen, drag the edges and hit enter when you’re done. you can of course crop out more than just that, but regardless of what you crop out, now is the time to do it. 

you can set an aspect ratio for your crop at the top of the screen if you’d like to be positive that all the gifs in your set will be the same:

4. my trusty action: resizing, converting to a smart object, and sharpening with one click

Now is when I use an action I made that does all the resizing, converts to a smart object, and sharpens. I’ll take you through the steps so you can conceptually get what’s going on, but I highly recommend using the actions window to record your process as you follow along so you have this action as well. It easily shaves at least 5-10 minutes off of the whole process, and these steps will be the same every time. 

here’s how you make an action: go to window > action and open the action panel. click the plus symbol to start recording a new action:

in the window that pops up, give it a name and hit record:

now just continue with the steps below, and it will save them!

first you flatten frames to clips (I think it says flatten to layers on older versions of photoshop). this is in the menu at the top right corner of your timeline:

next you convert to frame animation by clicking on the symbol in the bottom left, circled in red:

if there is more than one thing in the frame animation, delete the extra one. you don’t need to keep the last one but it won’t let you remove it until there are other frames in there. also go into your layers and delete video group 1 and its contents. don’t ask me why these steps are necessary, I don’t really know, but I’ve noticed it sometimes gets wonky if you don’t do this:

now you want to make frames from layers and delete that first frame that was there before:

then we return to the timeline: 

use command + option + a (control + alt + a for pc I'm pretty sure) to select all layers and then right click within your layers window and select convert to smart object. It’s important to convert to smart object after you go back to the timeline, or the gif won’t move:

next I resize. gifs for tumblr should be 540 pixels wide. for recording your action you should just go into image > image size and only change the width to 540 in case you ever have gifs cropped to different aspect ratios. don’t touch the height, let constrain proportions figure it out!

now, here’s what our base gif looks like, no sharpening, no coloring:

now to sharpen. go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. this is up to personal preference, but my go to settings are:

this is what we have after sharpening:

now is when you can stop recording your action. 

just press the stop button in the action window:

this action is pretty much universal and after I select the moment the gif will be and crop however I want, I use it on every gif I make!  so although this initial setup is tedious, now you’ll never have to do these steps again, and the process is magically much quicker.

5. it’s time to jump into coloring!

I typically start with exposure and sometimes some brightness/contrast. with really dark gifs like this, you kind of have to make it worse before you make it better. I did this:

now the gif looks like this:

we have some static and some ugly bits, and this is where selective color comes in to fix it! boost blacks like this:

and now your gif looks like this:

the skin tone is looking a little sickly and weird, so I go into the yellows and reds in my selective color layer to fix it! I also messed with the greens here because I didn't want color in the background (that part is totally optional and just up to your preference):

now we have this:

to really take the color 100% out of the background, I did one more separate selective color layer for cyan (again, I just felt like it but this is optional!):

and now the finished gif:

there’s lots of fun extra things you can add like text and tints and overlays and all that I won’t get into, but feel free to reach out for help on those types of things! 

this gif was certainly not the most complicated to color. some ridonkulously dark clips (*cough cough* vendredi 20h27 *cough cough*) take tons and tons more effort than this and a lot of the time you’ll want to use color balance layers and vibrance layers and all of that to mess with your coloring. 

with all of this coloring business, I really just learned by doing. I don’t know all the technical purposes of each type of adjustment layer, and I tend to stay away from curves just because I find them confusing and annoying. The bottom line is that you should always experiment and find out whatever coloring works for you and run with it! I’m sure every gif maker you talk to does things at least a little differently! 

I highly recommend taking the time to go through all the types of adjustment layers and just move the sliders around to see what they do! That’s honestly one of the best ways to learn and decide what you like!

6. now to export and adjust the delay!

the keyboard shortcut for exporting on mac is command + option + shift + s, control + alt + shift + s for pc, otherwise you can go to file > export > save for web

my settings are here:

the settings only need to be configured once! otherwise just hit save and follow the pop ups to choose where to save and what name you want to give your gif. Since you saved as a psd way back, that will be the name it’s automatically given, but call it whatever you want!

then I adjust my delay by opening the gif I just exported (not the psd, the .gif file) and using one of my delay actions. I’ve made an action for each delay between 0.05 (real time) and 0.08 (really slow mo for certain super short shots, typically for more ~artsy~ sets). 

all my action does is select all frames:

adjust the delay (which will differ based on whether you want them slowed down and by how much): 

for reference, this is a 0.05 delay:

and this is a 0.08 delay

now you just export the same way you did before! 

remember if you’re recording this as an action, you don’t want to touch the file name, just say yes when it asks if you want to replace the file. if you always save your gifs to the same place, your action will now enable you to override any gif with the incorrect delay with the correct one with one click!

7. tldr: the main tips

for downloading 4k video downloader works well for non geoblocked youtube videos, the all of skam website is another place you can look to download with no subs, here’s the screen capping method if you don’t want to download

The main way I combat dark lighting is to bump exposure to the right, gamma correction to the left, and then enhance black in a selective color layer. The amount of these three adjustments will vary gif to gif. I know lots of people use curves, but I find them really confusing for some reason, so this is my method! As my graphics teacher likes to say: there are always at least 3 different ways to reach the same result!

there’s a little bit of additional coloring on this one, but here’s another before and after example so you can get an idea of how those steps get you a better lit result without making the lighter parts super over exposed:

besides those three steps, you have free rein to use the other selective color channels, as well as color balance, vibrance, hue/saturation, etc. to restore color that was lost or to change the colors altogether! mess around with it and have fun experimenting!

7a. bonus coloring tip: 

sometimes you can make use of selective color to completely alter an isolated color in your gif. You can get very adventurous with this, but here's a simple example of changing blue tones to teal (I got away with these gifs being longer because they were in rows of two in the set I posted them in. I'm too lazy to trim frames so I can put them here at 540 px without going over the 10mb limit so just ignore the quality ok):

7b. actions, actions, actions! 

if you find yourself doing a certain thing over and over, always record it as an action. the amount of time they will save you is honestly really impressive. 

You can duplicate actions, so, for example, if you have different sharpening preferences for different shows or scenes, you can duplicate your gif process action and go into the steps, double click smart sharpen, and alter it however you want! 

This could also be good to do for the different widths for tumblr if you ever do sets with rows of two or three! Duplicate actions is also how I made my actions that set delay at 0.05, 0.06, 0.07, and 0.08!

when in doubt, always make an action! it’s worth minimizing the tedious bits of the process as much as possible so you can focus on the fun part of seeing your awesome gifs come to life! any little task you find yourself doing often, make an action!

and for now that’s all I have. if any of this made no sense, if you want to suggest a correction or addition I could make, if you’re ever curious how I did something on any gifs I post, or if you have any other sort of questions, feel free to send me an ask or a dm! if I can’t answer your questions I’ll be happy to try to direct you to someone who can or a tutorial to help! again, I'm no expert, not even close, but I hope at least one person will find one thing in this mess that helps. 

#this got . so long omg #mystuff #mytutorial #gif tutorial #tutorial #resources #fellow gif making peeps feel free to correct me or give input on how to improve or add to this tutorial!

[maximelebled]

How I encode videos for YouTube and archival

Hello everyone! This post is going to describe the way in which I export and encode my video work to send it over the Internet and archive it. I’ll be talking about everything I’ve discovered over the past 10 years of research on the topic, and I’ll be mentioning some of the pitfalls to avoid falling into.

There’s a tremendous amount of misguided information out there, and while I’m not going to claim I know everything there is to know on this subject, I would like to think that I’ve spent long enough researching various issues to speak about my own little setup that I’ve got going on... it’s kind of elaborate and complex, but it works great for me.

(UPDATE 2020/12/09: added, corrected, & elaborated on a few things.)

First rule, the most golden of them all!

There should only ever be one compression step: the one YouTube does. In practice, there will be at least two, because you can’t send a mathematically-lossless file to YouTube... but you can send one that’s extremely close, and perceptually pristine. 

The gist of it: none of your working files should be compressed if you can help it, and if they need to be, they should be as little as possible. (Because let’s face it, it’s pretty tricky to keep hours of game footage around in lossless form, let alone recording them as such in the first place.)

This means that any AVC files should be full (0-255) range, 4:4:4 YUV, if possible. If you use footage that’s recorded with, like, OBS, it’s theoretically possible to punch in a lossless mode for x264, and even a RGB mode, but last I checked, neither were compatible with Vegas Pro. You may have better luck with other video editors.

Make sure that the brightness levels and that the colors match what you should be seeing. This is something you should be doing at every single step of the way throughout your entire process. Always keep this in mind. Lagom.nl’s LCD calibration section has quite a few useful things you can use to make sure.

If you’re able to, set a GOP length / max keyframe range of 1 second in the encoder of your footage. Modern video codecs suck in video editors because they use all sorts of compression tricks which are great for video playback, but not so efficient with the ways video editors access and request video frames. (These formats are meant to be played forwards, and requesting frames in any other order, as NLEs do, has far-reaching implications that hurt performance.) 

Setting the max keyframe range to 1 second will mildly hurt compressability of that working footage but it will greatly limit the performance impact you’ll be putting your video editor’s decoder through.

A working file is a lossless file!

I’ve been using utvideo as my lossless codec of choice. (Remember, codec means encoder/decoder.) It compresses much like FLAC or ZIP files do: losslessly. And not just perceptual losslessness, but a mathematical one: what comes in will be exactly what comes out, bit for bit.

Download it here: https://github.com/umezawatakeshi/utvideo/releases

It’s an AVI VFW codec. In this instance, VFW means Video for Windows, and it’s just the... sort of universal API that any Windows program can call for. And AVI is the container, just like how MP4 and MKV are containers. MP4 as a file is not a video format, it’s a container. MPEG-4 AVC (aka H.264) is the video format specification you’re thinking of when you say “MP4″.

Here’s a typical AVI VFW window, you might have seen one in the wild already.

In apps that expose this setting, you can hit “configure” and set the prediction mode of utvideo to “median” to get some more efficient compression at the cost of slower decoding, but in practice this isn’t a problem.

Things to watch out for:

Any and all apps involved must support OpenDML AVIs. The original AVI spec is 2GB max only. This fixes that limitation. That’s normal, but make sure your apps support that. The OpenDML spec is from the mid-90s, so usually it’s not a problem. But for example, the SFM doesn’t support it.

The files WILL be very large. But they won’t be as large as they’d be if you had a truly uncompressed AVI.

SSDs are recommended within the bounds of reasonability, especially NVMe ones. 1080p30 should be within reach of traditional HDDs though.

utvideo will naturally perform better on CGI content rather than real-life footage and I would not recommend it at all for real-life footage, especially since you’re gonna get that in already-compressed form anyway. Do not convert your camera’s AVC/HEVC files to utvideo, it’s pointless. (Unless you were to do it as a proxy but still, kinda weird)

If you’re feeling adventurous, try out the YUV modes! They work great for matte passes, since those are often just luma-masks, so you don’t care about chroma subsampling.

If you don’t care about utvideo or don’t want to do AVIs for whatever reason, you could go the way of image sequences, but you’ll then be getting the OS-level overhead that comes with having dozens of thousands of files being accessed, etc.

They’re a valid option though. (Just not an efficient one in most cases.)

Some of my working files aren’t lossless...

Unfortunately we don’t all have 10 TB of storage in our computers. If you’re using compressed files as a source, make sure they get decoded properly by your video editing software. Make sure the colors, contrast, etc. match what you see in your “ground truth” player of choice. Make sure your “ground truth” player of choice really does represent the ground truth. Check with other devices if you can. You want to cross-reference to make sure.

One common thing that a lot of software screws up is BT.601 & BT.709 mixups. (It’s reds becoming a bit more orange.)

Ultimately you want your compressed footage to appear cohesive with your RGB footage. It should not have different ranges, different colors, etc. 

For reasons that I don’t fully understand myself, 99% of AVC/H.264 video is “limited range”. That means that internally it’s actually squeezed into 16-235 as opposed to the original starting 0-255 (which is full range). And a limited range video gets decoded back to 0-255 anyway.

Sony/Magix Vegas Pro will decode limited range video properly but it will NOT expand it back to full 0-255 range, so it will appear with grayish blacks and dimmer whites. You can go into the “Levels” Effects tab to apply a preset that fixes this.

Exporting your video.

A lot of video editors out there are going to “render” your video (that is to say, calculate and render what the frames of your video look like) and encode it at the same time with whatever’s bundled in the software.

Do not ever do this with Vegas Pro. Do not ever rely on the integrated AVC encoders of Vegas Pro. They expect full range input, and encode AVC video as if it were full range (yeah), so if you want normal looking video, you have to apply a Levels preset to squeeze it into 16-235 levels, but it’s... god, honestly, just save yourself the headache and don’t use them.

Instead, export a LOSSLESS AVI out of Vegas. (using utvideo!)

But you may be able to skip this step altogether if you use Adobe Media Encoder, or software that can interface directly with it.

Okay, what do I do with this lossless AVI?

Option 1: Adobe Media Encoder.

Premiere and AE integrate directly with Adobe Media Encoder. It’s good; it doesn’t mix up BT.601/709, for example. In this case, you won’t have to export an AVI, you should be able to export “straight from the software”.

However, the integrated AVC/HEVC encoders that Adobe has licensed (from MainConcept, I believe) aren’t at the top of their game. Even cranking up the bitrate super high won’t reach the level of pristine that you’d expect (it keeps on not really allocating bits to flatter parts of the image to make them fully clean), and they don’t expose a CRF mode (more on that later), so, technically, you could still go with something better.

But what I’m getting at is, it’s not wrong to go with AME. Just crank up the bitrate though. (Try to reach 0.3 bits per pixel.) Here’s my quick rough quick guideline of Adobe Media Encoder settings:

H.264/AVC (faster encode but far from the most efficient compression one can have)

Switch from Hardware to Software encoding (unless you’re really in a hurry... but if you’re gonna be using Hardware encoding you might as well switch to H.265/HEVC, see below.)

Set the profile to High (you may not be able to do this without the above)

Bitrate to... VBR 1-pass, 30mbps for 1080p, 90mbps for 4K. Set the maximum to x2. +50% to both target and max if fps = 60.

“Maximum Render Quality” doesn’t need to be ticked, this only affects scaling. Only tick it if you are changing the final resolution of the video during this encoder step (e.g. 1080p source to be encoded as 720p)

If using H.265/HEVC (smaller file size, better for using same file as archive)

Probably stick with hardware encoding due to how slow software encoding is.

Stick to Main profile & Main tier.

If hardware: quality: Highest (slowest)

If software: quality: Higher.

4K: set Level to 5.2, 60mbps

1440p: set Level to 5.1, 40mbps

1080p: keep Level to 5.0, 25mbps

If 60fps instead of 24/30: +50% to bitrate. In which case you might have to go up to Level 6.2, but this might cause local playback issues; more on "Levels” way further down the post.

Keep in mind however that hardware encoders are far less efficient in terms of compression, but boy howdy are they super fast. This is why they become kind of worth it when it comes to H.265/HEVC. Still won’t produce the kind of super pristine result I’d want, but acceptable for the vast majority of YouTube cases.

Option 2: other encoding GUIs...

Find software of your choice that integrates the x264 encoder, which is state-of-the-art. (Again, x264 is one encoder for the H.264/AVC codec specification. Just making sure there’s no confusion here.)

Handbrake is one common choice, but honestly, I haven’t used it enough to vouch for it. I don’t know if the settings it exposes are giving you proper control over the whole BT601/709 mess. It has some UI/UX choices which I find really questionable too.

If you’re feeling like a command-line masochist, you could try using ffmpeg, but be ready to pour over the documentation. (I haven’t managed to find out how to do the BT.709 conversion well in there yet.)

Personally, I use MeGUI, because it runs through Avisynth (a frameserver), which allows me to do some cool preprocessing and override some of the default behaviour that other encoder interfaces would do. It empowers you to get into the nitty gritty of things, with lots of plugins and scripts you can install, like this one:

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Dither_tools (grab it)

Once you’re in MeGUI, and it has finished updating its modules, you gotta hit CTRL+R to open the automated script creator. Select your input, hit “File Indexer” (not “One Click Encoder”), then just hit “Queue” so that Avisynth’s internal thingamajigs start indexing your AVI file. Once that’s done, you’ll be greeted with a video player and a template script.

In the script, all you need to add is this at the bottom:

dither_convert_rgb_to_yuv(matrix="709",output="YV12",mode=7)

This will perform the proper colorspace conversion, AND it does so with dithering! It’s the only software I know of which can do it with dithering!! I kid you not! Mode 7 means it’s doing it using a noise distribution that scales better and doesn’t create weird patterns when resizing the video (I would know, I’ve tried them all).

Your script should look like this, just 3 lines

LoadPlugin("D:\(path to megui, etc)\LSMASHSource.dll")

LWLibavVideoSource("F:\yourvideo.avi")

dither_convert_rgb_to_yuv(matrix="709",output="YV12",mode=7)

The colors WILL look messed up in the preview window but that’s normal. It’s one more example of how you should always be wary when you see an issue. Sometimes you don’t know what is misbehaving, and at which stage. Always try to troubleshoot at every step along the way, otherwise you will be chasing red herrings. Anyway...

Now, back in the main MeGUI window, we’ve got our first line complete (AviSynth script), the “Video Output” path should be autofilled, now we’re gonna touch the third line: “Encoder settings”. Make sure x264 is selected and hit “config” on the right.

Tick “show advanced settings.”

Set the encoding mode to “Const. Quality” (that’s CRF, constant rate factor). Instead of being encoded with a fixed bitrate, and then achieving variable quality with that amount of bits available, CRF instead encodes for a fixed quality, with a variable bitrate (whatever needs to be done to achieve that quality).

CRF 20 is the default, and it’s alright, but you probably want to go up to 15 if you really want to be pristine. I’m going up to 10 because I am unreasonable. (Lower is better, higher numbers means quality is worse.)

Because we’re operating under a Constant Quality metric, CRF 15 at encoder presets “fast” vs. “slow” will produce the same perceptual quality, but at different file sizes. Slow being smaller, of course. 

You probably want to be at “slow” at least, there isn’t that much point in going to “slower” or “veryslow”, but you can always do it if you have the CPU horsepower to spare.

Make sure AVC Profile is set to High. The default would be Main, but High unlocks a few more features of the spec that increase compressability, especially at higher resolutions. (8x8 transforms & intra prediction, quantization scaling matrices, cb/cr controls, etc.)

Make sure to also select a Level. This doesn’t mean ANYTHING by itself, but thankfully the x264 config window here is smart enough to actually apply settings which are meaningful with regards to the level.

A short explanation is that different devices have different decoding capabilities. A decade ago, a mobile phone might have only supported level 3 in hardware, meaning that it could only do main profile at 30mbps max, and if you went over that, it would either not decode the video or do it using the CPU instead of its hardware acceleration, resulting in massive battery usage. The GPU in your computer also supports a maximum level. 5.0 is a safe bet though.

If you don’t restrict the level accordingly to what your video card supports, you might see funny things happen during playback:

It’s nothing that would actually affect YouTube (AFAIK), but still, it’s best to constrain.

Finally, head over to the “misc” tab of the x264 config panel and tick these.

If the command line preview looks like mine does (see the screenshot from a few paragraphs ago) then everything should be fine.

x264 is configured, now let’s take care of the audio.

Likewise, “Audio Input” and “Audio Output” should be prefilled if MeGUI detected an audio track in your AVI file. Just switch the audio encoder over to FLAC, hit config, crank the slider to “smallest file, slow encode” and you’re good to go. FLAC = mathematically lossless audio. Again, we want to not compress anything, or as little as possible until YouTube does its own compression job, so you might as well go with FLAC, which will equal roughly 700 to 1000kbps of audio, instead of going with 320kbps of MP3/AAC, which might be perceptually lossless, but is still compressed (bad). The added size is nothing next to the high-quality video track you’re about to pump out. 

FLAC is not an audio format supported by the MP4 container, so MeGUI should have automagically changed the output to be using the MKV (Matroska) container. If it hasn’t, do it yourself.

Now, hit the “Autoencode” button in the lower right of the main window. And STOP, do not be hasty: in the new window, make sure “no target size” is selected before you do anything else. If you were to keep “file size” selected, then you would be effectively switched over to 2-pass encoding, which is another form of (bit)rate control. We don’t want that. We want CRF. 

Hit queue and once it’s done processing, you should have a brand new pristine MKV file that constains lossless audio and extra clean video! Make sure to double-check that everything matches—take screenshots of the same frames in the AVI and MKV files and compare them.

Now all you’ve got to do is send it to YouTube!

For archival... well, you could just go and crank up the preset to Placebo and reduce CRF a little bit—OR you could use the 2-pass “File Size” mode which will ensure that your video stream will be the exact size (give or take a couple %) you want it to be. You could also use x265 for your archival file buuuut I haven’t used it enough (on account of how slow it is) to make sure that it has no problems anywhere with the whole BT.601/708 thing. It doesn’t expose those metadata settings so who knows how other software’s going to treat those files in the future... (god forbid they get read as BT.2020)

You can use Mediainfo (or any player that integrates it, like my favorite, MPC-HC) to check the metadata of the file.

Good luck out there!

And remember to always double-check the behaviour of decoders at every step of the way with your setup. 99% of the time I see people talk about YouTube messing with the contrast of their video, it’s because they weren’t aware of how quirky Vegas can be with H.264/AVC input & its integrated encoder.

Hope this helps!

#video encoding #video editing #encoding #x264 #megui #avisynth

[bltngames]

SAGE 2020: Indie Games

SAGE may closed more than a day ago, but thankfully, the website remains up for those who still want to download its games. So even though this article is technically very late, nothing listed here is out of date. The event may be over, but the games live on! Which is honestly a relief, because I think doing ten games per article is taking its toll on me. Normally, when I’d write for TSSZ, I’d do somewhere in the realm of 5-7 games per article, and even that would eventually burn me out. After writing about 20 games this year, I was clearly starting to feel like I was running out of steam. Oh well. We live and learn. Here’s another ten games!

There’s one more article left after this, a sort of “honorable mentions” round-up that will feature much shorter blurbs as I blow through way more games way faster. If I didn’t talk about your game here in these three articles, now’s your chance to let me know so I can say something about it in the final article.

Anyway, onwards to our ten indie games.

Victory Heat Rally

I’m all for any game channeling the spirit of Sega’s old SuperScaler arcade technology, and Victory Heat Rally is all about that. Everything about this game seems so MY AESTHETIC that my only complaint is that I’m hungry for more. A lot more. This demo is a simple time trial on one race track and I’m itching to sink my teeth into literally anything else this game has to offer. There is an older demo from back in April with more content, but it’s running on a different version of the code base -- this newest demo is significantly improved both in terms of visuals and control. I really don’t have anything else to say about it. There’s not much here, but what’s here is charmingly retro in the style of Sega’s Power Drift, but cuter and even more colorful.

  Sondro Gomez: A Sunova Story

I had been interested to revisit Sondro Gomez after playing the first demo last year, but I don’t know if I just wasn’t in the right mood for it this year or what, but I kind of bounced off the game this time. To my memory, Sondro Gomez is a kinda-sorta side game in the Kyle & Lucy universe. You may remember Kyle & Lucy as one of a growing number of games coming out of the Sonic fan gaming community trying to break out as an original title. A while ago, the developers announced a partnership with Stealth to use the Headcannon engine to make the game with, something that extended to Sondro Gomez here. The problem is, it feels kind of weird now, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I think it’s the little stuff -- you don’t get a lot of positive feedback when attacking using your whip (the sound is a bit quiet), and the difficulty balancing errs on the side of caution. I died a couple times in my time playing this newest demo, but I wouldn’t characterize Sondro Gomez as a game that feels challenging. Some of that probably has to do with the fact this is still just a demo, which means you spend a long time fighting the same four enemy types in every single level. There’s a lot of charm to the story and the characters it involves, but that only takes you so far when it feels like you’re doing the same things over and over in the actual levels, you know? Either way, the touched up visuals and the new boss fights are welcome. Interested in seeing what the full release looks like next year.

  Delta Gal

In retrospect, a Mega Man Legends fan game seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Where Delta Gal has a leg up is in controls. Even considering the era Mega Man Legends was released in, it had very awkward controls. Delta Gal’s response is to embrace standard third person action game controls with a mouse and a keyboard. Now, there is controller support, but even once you get it set up, you have button layout presets like “Bad” and “Almost Good.” Honestly, if you can, just play it with a keyboard and mouse. The demo offers about 30-40 minutes of gameplay, with a bit of the town, a forest section, a cave, and one whole dungeon. Visuals nail the best parts of the Mega Man Legends low-fi aesthetic, colors are vibrant, and the pixel art textures look very good. The town is full of characters with lots of personality, too. A particular favorite being the guy who runs the junkyard who likes to show off by flexing his muscles but then ultimately chickens out when it comes to exploring the cave he discovers. The only downside I’d say is the sound design. The game sounds okay, but some of the music is a little bland, and certain sound effects lack the right kind of punch. Granted, this style of sound design isn’t easy, so I can empathize with the developers in that respect. Honestly, it doesn’t really detract from anything at all, so maybe it’s not even worth bringing up. Either way, good stuff, and I’m looking forward to the full release.

  Bun n’ Gun

Here’s a cute little game about a bunny in the old west. I’m absolutely in love with the visuals and the music here, but the gameplay is… interesting. Bun isn’t a typical shooter or platformer, thanks to the fact that he appears to only have one arm, which is occupied by his gun. Now you wouldn’t think this would matter, as it’s pretty easy to design a game around only having to jump and shoot, and that’s fair enough. But there’s a strange heft to this character. It takes them a little bit to pick up speed, and it takes them a bit to slow down, and there’s an unmistakable, split-second delay between pushing the jump button and actually jumping. I know enough about this kind of game development that a delay between pushing a button and actually jumping has to be a deliberate design decision, and I split on whether or not I like it. I don’t think I hate it, because it’s pretty easy to get used to the way it feels, but it does mean you’re working with a handicap when it comes to split-second movements. Given the bunny seems to only have one arm, though, perhaps that’s the point. Either way, it’s cute. Give it a look.

  Shield Cat

I feel like I’ve been over-using the word “charming” to describe games at SAGE this year, but you know what? Shield Cat is charming as heck. People also tend to think it’s reductive to describe things by comparing them to something that already exists, but I say nuts to that, too. Saying “It’s like…” is an easy shorthand, and besides, if somebody is saying your project is like one of their favorite games, it just means they’re giving you praise and might lack the words to accurately describe that praise. Thing is, that’s actually kind of hard to do with Shield Cat. The nearest relative to this game would be The Legend of Zelda, but Shield Cat honestly plays very little like Zelda, beyond having a top-down perspective. Secret of Mana, maybe, with the stamina meters? I don’t know. Regardless, this is a charming (!!!) top down action game where you roam around exploring an overworld and solve light puzzles. It controls well and the aesthetics are nice. Can’t really get much better than that, though I do have to wonder what it is you’re supposed to be doing in this game. It took me about 30 minutes to see everything available in this demo, but there’s no story setup and only the smallest pieces of what could be considered a dungeon. What’s on offer here is interesting enough that I find myself wanting to know more about this world. For example, it’s called Shield Cat, but clearly you’re some kind of ferret. What’s that about? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

  Prototype N

I’ve sat here staring into the void wondering what to write about for this game for a long time, because it’s one of those demos that’s just… a solid and fun game that nails exactly what it’s going for. I would say that Prototype N leans a little too far towards the easy side of things, but the third level provided in the demo ramps the challenge up enough to be just about perfect. And, really, that’s it. That’s the game. You get two softer introductory levels to get you acclimated to the controls (which are similar to Mega Man, but different enough not to be a direct clone) and one “real” level to actually give you a bit of a work out. There’s nothing else to really say. This has the vibe of a 1993 or 1994 Capcom game, or maybe something from Data East. Every single part of this game’s presentation is laser-focused on that aesthetic, and it pulls it off flawlessly. Sound design, music, visuals, it’s a bullseye. This game fell out of a time machine in the best way possible. Definitely give it a look.

  Yan’s World

From a game that nails the SNES aesthetic to this, a game which pays tribute to the Virtual Boy… but not really? I actually became aware of Yan’s World many years ago through a mutual Discord, and it always looked interesting, but simultaneously a little confusing, something that still mostly holds true to this day. Per the game’s own Kickstarter sales pitch, Yan’s World is “stylized as a lost title for Nintendo's Virtual Boy.” I can get down with that, but the game almost instantly breaks its own rule because Yan’s primary method of attack is to shoot a missile from his head that can only be aimed using the mouse. As such, Yan’s World doesn’t have controller support, even though one of the stretch goals currently listed on their Kickstarter page is to make a version that can be played on real Virtual Boy hardware. And, honestly, what’s the deal with this game’s whole… everything else? Why is this kid an onion? Why are the platforms made out of clocks? Why does all of Yan’s dialog make him seem like he’s sort of pissed off when he’s got such a big happy smile? There’s a bit of a hand-wave to suggest the entire game takes place inside of a dream, and for once that actually means throwing logic out the window, I guess. Oh, the missile is a pillow? Fine, whatever. Use it to blast this demonic apple, and then threaten to kill an innocent NPC. It’s a dream! Despite how little sense that makes, it… kind of works? The sprites are big and lovely, the game controls well, and the level design is plenty creative. I can’t fault the game for that, it’s just trying to figure out everything wrapped around the game that feels so bizarre.

  Cosmic Boll

I don’t know if I really understand what’s going on in Cosmic Boll, but I love to play it just the same. This plays like if Treasure made Dragon Ball Advance Adventure while strung out on cocaine. The end result is pure hyperactive chaos. There is a whole complicated combat system at play here, and a very lengthy in-depth tutorial when you first start the game, but you can figure out a lot of it by just skipping the tutorial and playing the game for real. You can get by pretty easily by just mashing buttons and seeing what happens, and that’s not a complaint, because a lot happens in this game. Like, constantly. It never stops, it never really slows down. You’re always zipping around, spinning and flipping and punching soldiers, explosions everywhere, collectibles everywhere, just utter madness. It’s Sonic the Hedgehog plus Devil May Cry plus Gunstar Heroes and all of it is mixed up in ways you probably don’t expect. All of this is to say that Cosmic Boll is messy and cool and fun and you should probably play it.

  Brock Crocodile

This is a game I’ve seen a lot of around social media, and it’s nice to finally be able to try it. Weirdly enough, this is the first game all SAGE that has flat out refused to see my controller. For the last few years at SAGE, I’ve been using a Playstation DualShock 4, which typically causes me all kinds of headaches with games expecting an Xbox controller. This year, I’ve been using an 8bitdo SN30+. These things are designed primarily to be used on the Switch, but using a controller macro, you can change it to Xbox or Playstation modes. The “Xbox” mode has served me well so far, but Brock here fails to let me use the controller at all. Fortunately, with only three buttons, Brock manages to be mostly playable on a keyboard. That being said, a lot of this game feels a little bit off. The camera is kind of swimmy, as it's almost constantly in motion trying to get a better angle on what's around you. Brock himself doesn't have a smooth acceleration curve either -- it's more like shifting gears in a car, where you reach one top speed and then click up into the next highest speed. That can work, but Brock changes gears much too quickly and without much feedback, making it look like one jerky acceleration curve instead of two. And then there’s the visuals. Level art looks great, character portraits look great, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of the sprites I’ve seen in this game. Take Brock himself, for example: he’s got insanely thick thighs for some reason but the rest of his body looks thin and wispy, and he stands with kind of weird posture. The good news is, despite these complaints, Brock Crocodile is actually really fun to play. You eventually get used to the game’s control quirks, and the level design and included boss fight are excellent, striking that perfect balance where they aren’t too easy but don’t feel unfairly difficult, either. Plus, even though the cutscenes aren’t skippable (annoying as I was dealing with controller issues), the writing is snappy and the dialog is funny. It may not be perfect, but there’s still a lot to like here.

  Marble Launcher

Here’s one of those games where you can tell the creator is just starting out making games. And that’s great! These sorts of endlessly complex, winding mazes are exactly the kind of levels I started making when I first got into game development when I was 16 or 17 years old. One could spend hours searching every nook and cranny in these levels, which is simultaneously awesome and exhausting. Thankfully, near as I can tell, nothing FORCES you to go exploring, so if you’d rather just finish the game, it’s easy enough to head straight for the goal. Gameplay is extremely simple, otherwise. You’re a marble, you can attack enemies by bouncing off of their heads, and you have a slam move. That’s it. You might think that with this being a marble game, you’d get real rolling ball physics, but all you get is simple platformer controls. They’re good enough, especially considering how esoteric the shape of the levels can get, but it’s hard not to be a little disappointed. Still, it’s not a bad little game for what it is. Controls a bit better than some of my earliest attempts at game development, too.

Thirty games total! That’s a lot of games to talk about. And there’s still more to come, so stay tuned for that.

#sage #sonic amateur games expo #writing #review slew #indie games #victory heat rally #sondro gomez #delta gal #bun n' gun #shield cat #prototype n #yan's world #cosmic boll #brock crocodile #marble launcher

[jksangelic]

peaches & piercings (m)

↳ rating: M

↳ genre: punk!jimin, e2l, college au, very explicit smut, one-shot, jimin is a whole asshole

↳ pairing: cheerleader!reader x punk!jimin

↳ warnings: explicit sexual content, unprotected sex, sub/dom themes, casual sex, be t r ay a l, alcohol (and weed? idk) consumption, oral sex (male receiving), squirting, thigh-fucking, kind of exhibitionism?, jimin is pierced (that’s all i’ll say), just expect the worst from me tbh

↳ summary: jimin, dipped in hair-dye and pierced in so many places that you just couldn’t keep track, doesn’t think you’re his “type”. you call bullshit.

↳ note: i reallyreallyreally hated this fic. loved the idea, hated how i wrote it. i’ve had this bad boy sitting in my archives for months and months and months and couldn’t gather the courage to post it until NOW! partially because this is an apology fic for my inactivity and more so because i just think i’ve read it too many times that at this point, i’m just being nit-picky and need to move on.

a special thanks to the lovely @14statelier whomst unwillingly received dong pics for the sake of this fic. i’m so glad i found someone as sweet as you to beta for me + become an even better galpal! love u always xx

also thanks to my gal @jungshookz, i’m pretty sure (78% positive) i sent her my idea via snapchat and was probably inspired by her in some way, per usual.

OKAY i’m done you can read now hehehe

↳ words: 11.6k

↳ parts: one | two (complete)

“Jungkook, if you’re not going to throw it then get your grabby hands off my waist,” you warn, eyeing him as he stands behind you and delays in one-manning you into an extension or ogling your ass in your skirt.

           “You’re just so wobbly today, I’m waiting for you to chill out a bit,” he lies with a smirk. You smack his hand but exhale deeply as you firmly grasp his wrists and count.

           “1, 2!” With mutual timing, Jungkook dips down with you before heaving your body above, squatting to catch your heels mid-air, and pumping back up into an extended position. He’s right, you wobble a bit, calling out, “Bail!” and feeling his hands disappear beneath to re-catch your thighs and bring you down safely on your toes. You curse silently under your breath but pat Jungkook’s shoulder as a symbolic “thank you”.

“It’s too fucking early for this, I’m tired,” you say, only making excuses for yourself.

“Well, liven up. The doors are going to open soon and no freshmen want to join a failure of a cheer team.”

“Hey, stop bickering,” the captain, Suzy, orders, “Y/N, you’re fine to just handle the flyers, I’ll stunt with Jungkook.” You squish her into an exhausted hug.

“This is why you’re captain,” you coo.

With that, some of the staff open the gym doors, welcoming an intimidatingly large group of people in with smiles. You fake one yourself, ready to get this over with as soon as possible so you can go back to your dorm and sleep. Within ten minutes, you had a group of girls and a handful of brawny guys already watching Suzy and Jungkook’s exhibition, a mixture of oohs and ahs being rewarded. You handed each of them a thin, poorly-made flyer with pixelated clipart of a girl doing a toe-touch before they scrambled.

After a while, most of the initial commotion dies down and you people-watch each clueless face, thinking how adorable they are, so young and so lost, as if it weren’t you only a few months ago. You’re only a sophomore, but in your head that gives you enough authority to judge the freshmen.

You snap out of your daze upon boots clicking in the distance, soon revealing a man seemingly darting through the crowds to exit across the other side. You would’ve ignored him if it wasn’t for his peachy-tinted hair, long and slicked back atop and close-shaven near his neck, his thin but fit stature dressed in all-black, and the glint of metal, that you soon realized was a septum piercing, in his nose. He has a dark sleeve consuming his right arm and you wonder what eighteen or nineteen year old has a fully-developed sleeve.

Although his eyes were covered with chunky black sunglasses (in the gym, at that), the rest of his appearance sent your pierced-and-tatted-hot-boy alarm berserk. Suddenly awake, you wait for him to head closer to your booth before hopping next to him.

“Hi there, freshie. Care to take a tryout flyer for this year’s cheer team?” you ask with a pitch that’s much higher than your own, kindly handing him one of the shitty-looking papers. He mutters something under his breath that you don’t catch but speaks before you can ask him to clarify.

“Not a freshman. Do I look like someone who cheers? I’m just looking for the counseling center to turn in my transfer papers.

“Also, can you, like, give me some personal space?” he continues in a mock valley-girl tone.

You jump back, completely caught off guard with his sudden hostility and attempting to regain your composure by clearing your throat. Someone must’ve shoved a stick up his ass this morning.

“Oh, uh, sorry. Once you leave the gym, you head right, pass two sets of restrooms, head left, and it’s behind the big statue where the foyer is.” Your voice sounds much better.

His eyebrows rocket upwards over his glasses, completely frazzled by the number of directions you gave him, “Shit, okay. That’s a lot.”

“Here, I’ll just walk you,” you say, not giving him any time for him to probably decline. You don’t even question if he’s following you or not, the obvious clunkclunkclunk of his boots giving it away.

Unsurprisingly, the man doesn’t try to talk to you on the way to the counseling center. At most, he walks side-by-side, at least three meters between you for good measure. And even though it’s pretty clear he doesn’t want to talk, you ring him out a little more anyway.

“So, you’re not a freshman. Underclassman or upperclassman? And you’re a transfer? From where?”

Pass two sets of restrooms and head left.

“Senior. From Busan.” He doesn’t even show a hint of feeling. Emotion. Does this guy even breathe?

Straight until the statue in the foyer.

“Great. Well, it was nice to meet you, senior from Busan. I’m Y/N. If you ever need help or anything, feel free to ask me,” you deadpan, swiveling on your feet to salute him.

He leans on one hip, taking a hand with an incredible amount of rings on it and pushing his sunglasses over his hair like a headband. You certainly weren’t expecting a reveal of the kindest puppy dog eyes you’ve ever seen in your entire life. He almost looks permanently sleepy—eyes drooping flat on the lid. Your trance distracted you from his brief once-over, unpredictably impressed by your looks, if he had to admit it.

“It’s Jimin. Jimin, senior from Busan. See you around, cheerleader,” he says with a sly tilt of his lips before swinging the door open and slithering into the office. Past all the glitter and bright colors that poured out of that hideous uniform of yours, Jimin found you really cute.

Jimin waits patiently for the front desk to call him up, lounging in one of the hard, black plastic chairs that never failed to give his ass cramps. Though he didn’t seem like it to new faces around the campus, he was ecstatic to be starting college again in a whole new atmosphere. He even got to room with another male originally from Korea, Min Yoongi, in a small condo not too far a walk from the area.

He could even prospect cuties like you during his year, undoubtedly positive he could busy himself judging by the attention he’s attracted so far. All it would take is a hungry stare, a lick of his lips, an all-knowing smirk. It was easier here than it was back home, if not child’s play. He could have you in three hours flat. But then he thinks of you choosing the obnoxious cliché of college cheerleader and cringes at the idea of associating himself with such… American-ness. He could at least go for some sort of indifferent, grunge hipster that might actually have some thought to her. Yeah, more his style.

The woman at the front finally calls for him, so he arranges his papers and shoos away any daydream of hooking up with the girl in a tight skirt and ankle socks.

Taking the long route back to the gym, your imagination sputters through all the possible reasons why you should hate that guy, bad-guy radar ringing and shrieking and threatening to punch you square in the eye if you even think about it. Eventually, it comes to the conclusion that he was just new, he was probably having a rough moving-in, and you shouldn’t judge a transfer by their hair. Book by its binding? You don’t really remember how the saying goes in this situation.

“Hey, good job on snaking yourself out of flyer duty. What, did you bang Asian Hot Topic on your way?” Jungkook snickers.

“And did Cait break up with you because you can’t dom for shit? Hand me my jacket.”

He guffaws, practically throwing the clothing at your face, “We didn’t break up, asswipe. How am I supposed to act when she suddenly calls me ‘daddy’ without previous warning? I’m not ready to be a father.”

“Kook, you’re dumb as shit. Maybe I should bang Asian Hot Topic and give you pointers of how a real dom works their magic.”

Jungkook crosses his arms in denial, “Pfft, you don’t even know him. He could be a receiver for all you know.”

One, two, three seconds. You both chortle at the impracticality.

You take one final look in the body mirror, adjusting the slinky grey dress and hanging an oversized burnt-orange corduroy jacket over your shoulders for that final touch of unnecessary, but fashionably-adept, garnish to your outfit cupcake. Not having enough time to do your hair, you sweep it over to one side and leave it as is.

“You look fine and you’re ten minutes late so get out already,” your roommate, Sara, whines. She practically pushes you out, slamming and locking the door for emphasis.

Waving off your discombobulated roommate, you start your trek to the humanities building (which is so far away) with a skip in your step. A new school year meant new people, new classes, more lunchtimes with subpar food and occasional parties that could potentially lead to you getting arrested. Who knows!

A new school year, however, didn’t mean that you would know your way to your new class apparently. Bummer.

It’s only by your fourth circle and a glance at your phone that you panic, fifteen minutes somehow passing in the midst of your scrambling. Pace quickening, you pull out your paper with sloppily written notes of what class room number was at which time, simultaneously half-jogging past classrooms and—

“Oof!”

You land straight on your ass.

“Ow, watch where you’re going stu—oh, it’s you.”

You look up groggily, pain stinging through your legs from the brunt of your fall and lazily making eye contact with a pair of puppy dog eyes. Jimin stands above you, rubbing his chin where, you suppose, your forehead made rough contact with and indiscreetly staring at your bright blue panties where your dress failed to cover.

Hopping up and dusting yourself off, you pick up your fallen bag and paper before glaring at him, “Sorry, I got lost and wasn’t paying attention.”

He scoffs, “Aren’t you the cheerleader? You’re supposed to be, like, the girl scout of the school, right? You shouldn’t be lost.”

You roll your eyes, “Yeah, well. I am,” you mutter to yourself, “I don’t even think there’s a 207 in this building…”

“Oh, 207? Intro to psych, right? That’s where I’m going too,” he admits, eyes blown wide. Welp, certainly not the highlight of your morning.

“Great. By the looks of the current time, we’re both lost and,” you wave around the empty corridor, “there’s no one who’s going to help us.”

“I’m not lost. I just woke up late,” he answers nonchalantly, a warm glow to his face like he couldn’t give two damns about his class.

“W-What? Then let’s go! Where is it?”

Jimin twirls and walks a different direction, mumbling, “I’m not your escort, rich girl.”

You prattle at his comment but follow him anyway. When you find the correct lecture hall, you groan at the fact that you already passed it several times. He opens the door quietly, not even bothering to hold it for you as you scramble to catch it. A couple of the back rows look back at you two, annoyed by the minor inconvenience.

“Well. Welcome to my 10AM psychology class at,” the professor booms through the hall and peeks at his wristwatch, “10:36. Go ahead and take these two free seats.”

Jimin shrugs and walks towards the front of the room, a quiet and embarrassed you tiptoeing behind him. Being this late and having to sit next to this ass wasn’t how you wanted your first day to go at all.

For the remainder of the 24 minutes until the first break, you skim over the contents that you missed in the syllabus and want to ram your head into the closest wall. Participation and attendance by themselves are 30% of your grade, homework and assignments (thank god) being a measly 20%, and the final plus tests and quizzes a hunking remainder of 50%. What even was this system?

During your ten minute break, you silently scroll through your phone notifications, setting it down irritatingly when the hall refused to grant you enough service to respond to any of them.

“Don’t have LTE, princess? Might as well watch paint dry without your phone to entertain you,” Jimin snickers beside you. You scowl menacingly at him and he giggles more.

“I don’t know what your problem is, but back off, Jimin. Sorry I don’t, like, play the electric guitar in my free time or whatever.”

He doesn’t respond immediately, still smiling and blowing bubbles with his gum, popping them quite obnoxiously, and quite intentionally.

“What, do you think I play the electric guitar? Are you stereotyping me as some sort of garage band drop-out punk?” he jesters.

“And do you take me for some sort of pink fuzzy consumerist? You don’t know me. Buzz off.”

Jimin had definitely tucked you into his mental folder of “tough gals”; his aloof tactic of flirting not seeming to penetrate that pretty skull of yours. He could just take the path of least resistance and approach you normally, but where was the fun in that? You were too interesting a specimen to just use-and-discard.

Jimin suddenly thinks you look attractive with furrowed brows and pouted lips. It was most definitely working for you, so he lets it slide for now. When class ends, you all but bolt before Jimin can even look your way, sure he’d find another surface flaw to pick at.

You suddenly think of what all of the adults in your life have said during your upbringing: people that went out of their way to bully you were either jealous or had an embarrassingly crushing “thing” for you. Jimin, on the other hand, was just annoying.

Of course, to your dismay, class isn’t the only time you ever saw him. You weren’t totally stupid. The campus didn’t stretch for miles and you were bound to see him sometime and have to deal with the efforts of avoiding the man at all costs but fuck were you praying to whoever controls your Sim above that they would grant you some mercy.

“Just tell him to fuck off if he’s so far up your ass,” Jungkook argues, crushing his juice box in one gulp and biting his massive cafeteria burrito.

“You don’t get it, Kook. I have. So many times, in so many different instances. Did I tell you about the time I thought he was helping me get a textbook from a tall shelf but he ended up taking that last one for himself?” You angrily rip a bite from your limp sandwich. You really did hate Turkey Thursdays.

“Eh, first come, first serve. Maybe he didn’t know you were trying to grab that one.”

“My ass, Jungkook. He claimed that if I really wanted it, I would ‘do something in fair exchange’ for it. I’m not looking to going into prostitution anytime soon.”

“Respect sex workers,” Jungkook criticizes.

“Oh, no, totally. Sex work just isn’t my forte.” Kook shrugs.

“Okay,” you continue, “how about the time I went to IKEA to buy that ceiling lamp and was obviously struggling to one-trip everything from my car? The dumbfuck passed by and asked if I needed help, so I was like, ‘Yeah! Sure, it would definitely make up for the time you asked for sex in lieu of my psych book,’ but instead of helping me carry anything he took my coffee, drank some, and left.” Jungkook starts a rebuttal but you cut him off short, “Then he showed up to my work the other day, god knows how he even saw me in there, and started taking a video of me when I wasn’t paying attention!”

“What the hell,” your friend sports a face of disgust, “like, he’s stalking you?”

You scratch the back of your neck, “Well, not exactly? I think he was just maybe—see, A$AP Rocky may or may have not been playing on the speakers, and I didn’t know anyone was in the shop! So. I don’t know. I started—”

“Started rapping with a rolled up poster as your microphone,” he deadpans. Finishing your horrid sandwich, you crumple the saran wrap and chuck it at his eye, satisfied when we wails exaggeratingly.

“Maybe that’s just his way of flirting with you, he’ll get bored eventually.”

“I think he just hates my guts and thinks of me as an equal to the gum under his thick, goth boots,” you mumble.

“Does it matter? So what if Danny Phantom doesn’t like you?”

“He’s causing a problem though. Besides, everyone cares if someone doesn’t like them. It’s bullshit if they tell you otherwise; bullshit or a lack of sympathy.”

“So what are you going to do about it? Because I’m totally your friend and all but I don’t necessarily want to hear about your boy problems all the time.” You harrumph at his negligence and slump back into your seat.

There really wasn’t anything you could do about it; it wasn’t bad enough to the point of distressing tyranny. You simply couldn’t befriend the guy, it was obvious he didn’t want that. You would just have to pray to all things good that he would eventually lose interest, stop harassing you out of kindness, or have a change of heart and treat you like the saint you were.

If only it were that easy.

Sylly-week kicked ass, to say the least. Even two days prior the hectic week from hell, your body aches from partying while your wallet cries from all the textbooks and supplies you paid for.

Sara slept beside you, forehead stuck to the desk with her laptop stuck on some sort of half-assed document and you couldn’t fathom a better picture to represent college.

Although it was already around 11, you hop out of bed and throw on your windbreaker from cheer and some spandex, shuffling into a pair of your sneakers and bolting out of your room with your bag. The amount of sodium and sugar you consumed from Cup-O-Noodles and off-brand cookie dough bites made you feel disgusting, and you know running a quick mile at the gym would get your blood pumping enough to make you: 1) feel better about yourself and 2) put your ass to sleep.

The walk is short, the air still a little heavy with heat but cool enough for you to be comfortable in a long-sleeve. Some tired students exit the library, really the only other people you see at this hour. You would’ve thought it creepy if the campus wasn’t so well-lit and played background music through the announcement speakers. If you died or got kidnapped, at least it was to some groovy jazz.

You swipe your card across the sensor beside the athletic building door, waiting for that subtle beep before the gears clank and allow you to heave the door open. Immediately, the smell of sweat poorly masked with air freshener fill your nostrils and your adrenaline builds. You’re no body builder, but a run certainly sounded nice right about now.

You practically skip through the halls, rounding a corner to enter the weight room before you stop in your tracks to see someone in the room across. You squint suspiciously, peachy hair striking a very strong familiarity to…

“Jimin?” you whisper to yourself. You shouldn’t be surprised that he’s at the gym, but you are because he isn’t. He’s in the dance studio. Before you bolt, your eyes glue to his sensual movements, legs gliding across the floor and body free-flowing alongside the bass-filled music. No previous bias could deny that he looks like an angel in his room, dancing smooth as meringue and practically skating across the floor despite those clunky black boots of his; and powerful, hitting every note and beat with intention and vigor. You’ve never seen anyone dance like this.

After a few seconds, you render that you’re spying on him and continue walking, nervously scuffing your sneakers down the linoleum and immediately, and unfortunately, catching his attention.

He first sees you in the mirror. Ignores you. Then realizes it’s you and turns into the most ungraceful bag-of-bones as he scurries to pause the music and chases you down the hall.

“Hey!” he yells, grabbing your elbow.

“Don’t touch me,” you strike back, jerking your elbow out of his grasp and staring him down.

He looks apologetic, genuinely worried for a second before he breathes deep and tries again, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you like that. Um, why are you here?”

“Um, because I can be? I was going to go to the gym, dickwad.”

It takes all of his patience not to insult you, “Okay. You’re right. Were you… were you watching me?”

You give him a sickeningly-sweet smile, “Don’t flatter yourself. I was just passing by.”

He nods solemnly, straightening his tank as if it wasn’t already wrinkled and damp with sweat, “Okay. Okay, cool.” He starts to turn before he keeps going in a 360.

“Can you keep this between me and you? That I was here? That I was here and I was—”

“Dancing?” you ask quizzically, “Why does it matter?”

His eyebrows stitch together in frustration, “Y/N, do I look like I’m a dancer?” He gestures to his piercings and his sleeve, waving his hands about in so many different places that your lewd curiosity wonders what he looks like naked—for the sake of knowing how many piercings and tattoos he has though, obviously.

“I think you look like a dancer. Just not a contemporary dancer. Did you take ballet?” you half-tease, crossing your arms and beaming slyly at him.

Jimin huffs, impatient, “Will you just keep it locked somewhere in that airhead of yours?”

“What’s in it for me, Jiminie,” you pout, “what do I get as reward for keeping your secret?”

He falters a moment, licking his plump lips and walking dangerously close, “You want a reward? I don’t take you as that kind of girl, Y/N.”

He must be delirious, eyeing him so and shoving him away, “Ew, no. I just meant, like, be nice to me from now on. And help me with psychology. That class is nothing but a memory test.”

He blinks dumbly from your rejection; who ever rejected him? He waves it off.

“Okay. I can be compliant. I won’t treat you like the rich bitch you are, and I tutor you on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Deal?”

“I’m not a rich bitch. I have student loans like the rest of the student population, thank you very much. Deal.”

You smile at each other devilishly, ready to part ways before bursting out with an instant, “Wait!”

Jimin looks over his shoulder curiously. Damn, you could really see how toned his shoulders were in that shirt.

“There’re dance majors here, is that what you transferred for?”

He turns all the way, leaning sideways against the wall and sighing, “Honestly, yes. But my family thinks I’m transferring to finish my business degree and that I would have better opportunities here. I really did it because there’s some great studios in the area but—” he catches himself rambling, “I don’t know how they would feel about my grand decision.”

You shrug, “You’re a great dancer, Jimin. Honestly, you could open your own studio here if you wanted to. You do have great opportunities.”

His sleepy eyes stare you down, a half-smile drawing itself out before he can take it back. “Give me your phone,” he orders.

You don’t know why but you do.

He dials into it with his overly-accessorized fingers, giving you a moment to get a closer look at his septum and the abundance of ear-piercings he sports before he hands it back. You’re pretty sure one of them is Gucci and you bite back a chuckle. Rich bitch.

“That’s my number. Text me when you’re free on study days.”

And with that, he re-enters his room and resumes the music.

The first time Park Jimin meets with you at a Starbucks on a Tuesday, like he instructed, you thought you somehow managed to get yourself stuck in the Twilight Zone.

“Hey, it’s Y/N. My last class ends at 3 on both days and there’s already a quiz this Friday. Help.”

 You sent the text without emojis. He didn’t deserve any.

You had barely got to Instagram before he texted you back. With multiple messages.

 “u text like a gramma”

“but ok”

“starbucks at 330? i’ll buy”

 You giggled to yourself at his joke, sending a single “(:” and putting your phone to sleep.

 To your disbelief, he really did buy you a cheese danish and a tall, iced, caramel macchiato. You sip it gingerly while he pulls his things out of his bag: a couple mechanical pencils (the industrial, expensive ones), a 1-inch binder organized by subject with dividers, and notecards. You grab them and hold them up like it’s evidence from a leading murder case.

“Notecards? You are way too organized and functional.”

He snags your pastry before you can grab it and takes a huge bite, “Yeah, but ih’s gonna het you a bedder ghrade.”

Whining, you get it back after his second bite, somehow only half remaining.

“Okay. Let’s get started. It should only be a vocab check because that’s really all he’s asked us to study so far. We’ll start with my wonderful notecards,” he waves them in the air for effect, “and see which ones you do and don’t know.”

You nod, waiting for the chaos to begin. Who were you to tell him that you haven’t actually studied any of the vocab yet? He holds the first one up. Abductive reasoning.

“Uhh… is that like, something detectives use on kidnapping cases?”

“Wh-What? No. Well—are you thinking of ‘abductions’? Abductive reasoning is being able to use the two states of induction and deduction alongside your intuition to reach a conclusion,” he pauses and tilts his head a little, “ I guess the best analogy is giving out a verdict on a criminal case. Without being 100% sure, they use the evidence to tie together as many different points as they can to come to a conclusion. So, I mean, you got it wrong, but you can easily remember the definition with that.”

You’ll take what you get (majority of his reasoning went through one ear and out the other, anyway), wiggling your eyebrows in justified approval. Jimin laughs at you, eyes squinting to slits and shaking his head. He takes notice that you aren’t wearing much makeup today, your cheeks and the bridge of your nose a tad red with irritation and a bit dry where the sun burnt and eyes daintier without so much eyeliner on them. You threw on a tank and some workout shorts and look like the epitome of… comfortable, in your head. Jimin thinks you look effortless.

“Park?” you wave your hand in front of him.

He catches himself staring and jumps out of his seat, chair screeching across the tile.

“Sorry,” he coughs, “I’m going to take a whiz.” Stupid. He practically trips over himself to get to the restroom.

You watch him hurry to the back. He probably had much better things to do than help you study in the middle of the afternoon. A couple of younger girls watch him as he passes, giggling like a pack of fangirls and combing their hair out of their faces. If they only knew.

Did he even have a girlfriend? Most likely not, right? He only just transferred here and despite his well-endowed looks, he was still intimidating. Like a giant “don’t touch, I bite” sign constantly hung around his neck.

He comes back shortly, and before you can deduct that you would rather save the embarrassment than to quench your curiosity, you ask, “Are you dating anyone?”

“Because you get a lot of followers,” you reason, shamelessly pointing out the girls who ogle his tattooed biceps. They giggle again when he looks their way. God, so many giggles.

He rubs the back of his neck nervously and that intrigues you, “No, I’m not dating anyone. I think if it weren’t for my… accessories? And the fact that I’m foreign, girls wouldn’t like me as much.” You find tiny comfort that he’s single but squish the thought away.

“How ‘bout you? Dating that guy on your team?” he retorts.

“Who, Jungkook?” you snort, “No. He has a girlfriend and he’s all brawn over brain. I’m not dating anyone, actually. I don’t like guys that are so competitive to win females strictly for the points, and there’s a lot of that here. S’gross; we’re not animals.”

“We kinda are,” he argues, but smiles understandingly.

“Okay, but not in the way where your possible significant other has to perform an instinctual mating dance?”

He juts up an eyebrow, “Really? Because I could easily arrange that.”

For the first time, you both laugh. At the same thing. Who knew that Jimin could dance of all things? And pay for your food? And actually be a nice guy who’s really smart? Thinking about it, today has gone so polar-opposite of what you expected that you contemplate if this is Jimin’s identical twin that just happens to have the same piercings and ink that bully-Jimin has.

Twilight Zone.

“Okay, let’s continue,” he says, resuming the queue of notecards.

“Define abulia.”

“Hello? Earth to Y/N?” Jimin waved a hand in your face.

“Hm? Sorry, say it again.”

Jimin packed up his supplies, then grabs yours and tucks them into your bag, “I said, ‘Are we going to your place right now?’ You said you picked up Black Panther on DVD so I want to watch it.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Cats and shit.”

You both stand up and stretch, the rest of the students in the lecture hall slowly filing out. Midterms were already approaching, which meant that you and Jimin had known each other for quite some time now. His tutoring was ditched weeks ago after you were finally comfortable with the material and able to comprehend what the professor was saying without Jimin to interpret. At first, meeting up stopped completely. You two would talk occasionally during class break and that’s all, and after a while, you just figured your deal was completed and Jimin finished his case and you both separated onto your different ways.

But then Jimin had asked if you wanted coffee at the same Starbucks you had first studied at, but for no specific reason. Just to hang out. So, you did.

Hanging out once or twice for coffee turned into twice getting lunch turned into four or five times lazing about your dorm, and now, you were just completely, wholesomely, friends. It was hard not to be on edge at the contrast of current Jimin to hell-on-earth Jimin, but you took what you could get.

“Is something on your mind? You’ve been spacing out for a long time,” he prods, taking your bag himself and throwing it over the same shoulder his own bag was on. The

walk to your dorm building was short but you could feel your feet dragging from sudden exhaustion.

“I think I’m just tired? I’m fine. Ready to Black Panther it up and all that jazz,” you chuckle. He takes the hint and resorts to quietly humming to your room rather than talking. That’s one thing you liked about him, he always knew when your mind just needed simple white noise.

Unlocking the door and jostling it out of its stickiness, you make a running jump to faceplant onto your bed. The mattress dips next to you when Jimin sits.

“I know you like cheer and all, but I think you need to take a break,” he says.

“Easier said than done. And I have mandatory captain conditioning in 3 hours,” you groan, propping your head on the palm of your hand to watch Jimin as he eats a stale bag of chips that he found on your nightstand. His face contorts in repulsion and throws the bag away.

“Okay, well, you’re not going. Tell them you’re sick. Let’s watch some DC movies and eat popcorn and have, like, a girl sleepover but I’m not a girl and I don’t want to spend the night,” he says, counting each point on his fingers.

“First of all, you lunatic, it’s Marvel not DC. Second, I don’t have popcorn. I can’t just skip conditioning because if I gain one pound Jungkook will sense it with his nose or something and attack me.”

“What,” he says in disbelief, grabbing your waist with one hand and squeezing a little, “you’re fine. You’re not going today and that’s final.” It’s not very often he touches you and as much as you try not to show it, you feel your face heat and mouth gape open and closed, ready to combust. You don’t particularly know why; guys touch you all the time (not in that way, thank you very much) but when it was Jimin, it was like you had been raised feral and failed to receive any means of human interaction.

He notices, taking his hand away as quick as he placed it and looking at the floor. Despite your lack of proper reaction, you would be lying if you said you didn’t feel a little twinge of disappointment. God, you’re so confusing to yourself.

“How about you? Your vampire ass won’t dance in sunlight so you must be tired too. How long do you normally dance for when you’re in the studio?”

“Well,” he lays flat on his back and stares at your popcorn ceiling (your dorm building was extremely outdated), “I try to workout at the actual gym in the morning before I get ready for class, and then I dance from 11 to whenever I feel is enough during the weeknights. That is, if no one’s there.”

“Why do you even follow this whole path of disliking mainstream trends and ‘rebelling against the world’? Isn’t that tiring? Aside from dance, do you, like, make your own skateboards and go to secret underground bars or something?” you tease. He rolls his head towards you in annoyance and mouths a “ha ha”.

“No, I just. I don’t know. I don’t like people telling me what to do or where to go or how to look,” he showcases his tatted arm. “This is all mine. I don’t want to be another puppet controlled my whole life to consume and work off a never-ending debt just so I can only live comfortably when I’m old but too old to actually live.”

“Wow, bro. That’s deep,” you pretend to smoke a pretzel stick. He continues anyway.

“Recently I made some friends that are in one of my labs. They’re from Korea too. If I’m not studying or working or hanging out with you, I’m probably with them. Partying or something,” he says, stealing away your “cigarette” and crunching on it loudly.

“Woah, you work? How do you find the time to do that?”

“Kinda. Nothing official, I just tutor people sometimes. Charge them by the hour and make some decent pocket change for food or whatever.”

You contemplate. How come he’s never charged you for your tutoring before? You ask him, studying his side profile and admiring his jawline when he talks. Flexing then easing; taut then relaxed.

“Because we had a deal. We agreed that I would help you in psych as long as you kept my secret, in which you did, so I figured that was good enough. Besides, you’re too cute to charge. I look like a bad boy but I’m not evil.” You giggle, resembling a middle-school fangirl and exaggerating a flattered stature.

Jimin laughs again, light and refreshing staccato notes that you could honestly listen to all day. It was therapeutic in its own crackhead way.

You’ve been unintentionally staring at him more and more often, Jimin finally taking notice within the last few minutes. He knew how to read a girl; how revealing they make themselves to impress him or how their eyes dim in any sort of suggestion that his hands should somehow find place on their body. But with you, he has no idea what that stare means. For the most part, you carry yourself so independently to the point of being standoffish and Jimin just can’t figure you out. He sought the day you would give in and beg for a night with him just like most of the other girls in his classes did, and when you didn’t, he wanted to know why. Not out of inflated ego or need to get into your pants—okay maybe because of that initially—but even more so that he just needed to dissect you. Know how to get you going, what kind of person you really are, which was completely different from what he originally imagined.

You were talking amidst his thoughts, not paying attention to the strings of sentences that fell out of your lips and before he knew it, he held himself directly above you, hands on each side of your head and staring right down into your disordered doe eyes.

“What makes you so different?” he asks aloud, more to himself than you. Puzzled and not under the impression that it was a rhetorical question, you shake your head.

“I don’t u-understand. What are you doing, Ji—”

He tucks a loose strand of yours out of your face, causing you to hiccup. “I feel like when I think I know you, I’m actually far from it.”

You don’t particularly know what you’re supposed to say to that.

“You didn’t ever need to get to know me. You just needed to make sure I kept your secret,” you play along. Knowing it wasn’t really the whole case, your own statement stings a little. If it weren’t to save his own ass, would he even be here right now?

Like he read your mind, he answers, “Why would I be here? I haven’t needed to help you in weeks. I’m with you all the time because I want to be. Because I—”

“Because you…?” you trail on, heart beating so hard you swear he can hear it. You wanted him to say it, maybe that’s what was keeping you from confirming your feelings. You needed validation; that this wasn’t just you or that this was some one-sided longing because you doubted someone like him could ever like someone like you.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks instead, so hesitant and delicate and worrisome all in one question and you ponder if this is the same boy you first met at orientation.

“Please.”

He dips down slowly, eyes half-closed in anticipation of what your face looks like so close, pausing an inch away when you shut your own. You feel his warmth near your mouth, waiting for that first touch, any contact, until it seems like it’s been far too long. When you peek, you see nothing but his perfect… cheekbone? He stares, jaw stuck open and eyes fluttering, at the intruder in the door before swinging himself off the bed and coughing awkwardly.

“Oh, Sara. I didn’t know you were coming home so early today,” you squeak out. You sit up yourself, brushing off nonexistent dust from the bed and watching Jimin gather his things in a rush and squeezing past a concerned Sara in the doorway. He doesn’t even turn back, ears stinging red and peeping a quick, havetogotextyoulater. Great, the asshole left you to face your roommate alone.

“Was that Jimin? Park Jimin? The fucking transfer student?”

“Oh my god, Sara, what’re you freaking out about?”

Dropping her stuff in the middle of the room, she shrieks annoyingly and grabs your shoulders, “Are you seriously fucking with the Park Jimin? Y/N. Nuh-uh. No way. Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”

“Chill out! We’re just friends. He tutors me sometimes.” Not quite a lie.

She eyes you and deadpans, “Yeah, I didn’t know tutoring also included a one-on-one session of how to have sexual intercourse.”

“You’re so dramatic,” you remove her hands, which were digging crescents into your skin, and pretend to arrange your bed, “we haven’t even kissed. You just walked in at an inconvenient time.”

Sara sighs, rubbing her temples and sitting on your bed, “Look, babe. Just be careful. I’ve been to parties with him and have heard some awful things. Shit you expect from a movie where the girl gets fucked over because the guy doesn’t know how to keep his dick in his pants. I just want the best for you, okay? He’s not as sweet as you might think he is.”

He isn’t sweet at all, you said internally. But still, your heart clenches at her words. Sure, he acts like a dick, and you shouldn’t be surprised if he really does get around as much as Sara suspects; but there was just some sort of denial that lingered. If he really was such a player, why would he have stuck around with you for as long as he has, as platonic as it has been until now?

“I… I didn’t know that. I’ll be careful,” you assure her.

All it took was a squinty-eyed smile and a tiny caress to the small of your back on the way into the lecture hall for you to completely melt into his hands. You were simply putty, magically molding into some gross, odd-smelling ball of love just because of the almost-incident yesterday. You can practically feel the radiating disappointment from Sara if she knew how easily you gave yourself up for him.

His face reoccurs in your daydreams for days, all the way up until the weekend comes up from behind and smacks you on the ass.

“Focus,” Jungkook taps you through you skirt again. Oh, or maybe it was Jungkook.

The stadium speakers blared with announcements and you’re brought back to the world of clashing helmets, captain’s orders and Jungkook’s strong hands residing on your waist for partner stunts.

You didn’t need to be reminded, you were much more stable than you were weeks ago. He throws you in the air during the signaling note of the band and catches your right foot with ease above him, keeping you stable as you pull a heel stretch and present a pretty smile. The crowd roars along, inspiring the team and singing along with the cheers.

By the end of the game, you’re exhausted, tearing down paper signs from the concrete walls and shuffling your poms into your bag in a hurry.

“Hey, are you going to the feed after? Everyone’s going, I could give you a ride,” Jungkook offers, but you shake your head.

“I’m pretty beat. I’ll go next time.” He shrugs, finding more interest in catching up to someone who is interested than trying to convince you otherwise. By the time your clean-up is done, most of the fans are gone, the stadium a comparable difference of quiet than how it was only twenty minutes ago.

“You’re sure taking forever,” a sudden voice pipes up. Outside the gate stands Jimin, all-black tank and jeans, per usual. “You looked great out there.”

You smile, suddenly awake and jogging towards him, “What’re you doing here? I thought you didn’t like football.” During all your rushing do you realize that you relax around Park, time always seeming to slow down in his presence and you dissolve into his effect.

“I don’t. Such an American moneymaker. They’re all cons.” He takes your bag like he always does, leaning against the gate and looking excited, “Mind if we stop by my place? I have something to show you. It’s not far, probably only a 5 minute walk from here.”

You nod before he even mentions how long it takes to get there, heart palpitating at the thought that he’s inviting you over. You’re sure you smelled from cheer and you probably looked like the opposing team warmed up suicide runs over your sweaty body, but you nod.

“Were you here the whole time? Or just towards the end?” you ask, slightly insecure towards the fact that he could’ve been watching you cheer.

“Was here since halftime. Got Yoongs to watch with me at the gate where I was before for the most part. He left halfway through fourth quarter though, said he got tired from seeing others exert themselves so much,” he chuckles at the thought, eyes squinting and crooked tooth visible from the side. Your heart swooned, you were even starting to notice the little things. How he acted. His habits. What he did and didn’t like.

You were in fucking deep.

“I did get to see you cheer though,” he answers your unspoken inquiry, “you looked pretty, Y/N. It’s like watching a whole ‘nother person compared to how you act outside of uniform.” You’re still stuck on the word “pretty” and nod along like you’re listening.

“You should see how people look at you,” he draws on, “like they’re entranced. Even when you were just relaxing on the sideline, not doing anything, you stand out.”

“Oh my god, Jimin, where is this even coming from? One more compliment and the world might explode from the paradox you’re creating.”

He shoves your shoulder lightly, laughing at your tomato-red face, “What do you mean? I can’t compliment you?”

“No that’s not—I just mean. You know. You used to hate me and now you shower me with praise like I’m the best person in the world. It’s just crazy how much our relationship has changed. And… And yesterday—”

“Yo, can’t believe you really stayed for the rest of the game,” a raspy voice outbursts. You just realize that Jimin stopped you in front of a house, presumably his house, as a mint-haired ball sits on the porch. He inhales from his cigarette and exhales through his nose before throwing it underneath his boot.

“Hey, Yoongs. This is Y/N. Y/N, Min Yoongi, my roommate. Has a bad smoking habit and have only recently gotten him to smoke outside.” Jimin snickers, offering a hand to lift Yoongi off the step and welcome him into some bro-hug.

“You smoke too, bastard. Just did it ‘cause I knew you were bringing someone home tonight,” Yoongi retaliates, eyeing your figure. Shivers run down your spine at the comment.

Jimin coughs unexpectedly, then anxiously laughs as he pulls your arm behind him and into the house, “We’ll be in the living room. Go sleep or something.” Yoongi only clicks his tongue in response.

“Sorry,” he says once your inside, “he can be a little too personal sometimes. He’s really nice once you get to know him.” You shake your head, giving him a comforting smile that eases the tension in his shoulders.

He settles you on the couch, host-like politeness apparent when he asks if you want anything to drink, tells you where the bathroom is, and hands you the tv remote before disappearing to find his laptop. His home was cozy, minimalist furniture often in gray, black, and an occasional blue spread throughout the rooms. You weren’t sure if the boys were attempting to be modern or if college tuition only allowed them this sort of set-up, but nonetheless, it was way nicer than you expected.

“Back,” Jimin plops onto the couch right next to you, Apple laptop unlocked to a default background. He looks to you briefly before setting up some page on Google, “Have you signed up for your classes for next quarter yet?”

He looks different, your eyes scanning over his face to figure out just what it is, “Basically, just gotta confirm and pay and whatnot. Have you, Jimin?”

It’s his septum, you discover, that he’s taken out. He looks handsome either way. Propping the laptop suddenly on your lap, he beams, “Yeah, go ahead and take a look.”

You scroll through the page, humming to yourself, “Mhm… Mhm… Accounting, business 101, contemporary repertory… God, you’re going to hate sociology with Doyard, she’s a complete psycho!” You trail, giggling at his misfortune. Once you’re done, you meet his discontent face.

It takes a few takes from his face to the screen, back to his face, until oh shit!

“Wait does ‘contemporary repertory’ mean something important?” you squeal in rushed excitement. “Is that a dance thing? Are you taking a dance class here?” Before he can even explain, you shut the laptop and safely place it on the coffee table before tackling the man, withdrawing an oof from his lips.

“Easy, girl. Please don’t break me before I even get to show up on the first day.”

“Jimin, this is amazing. You’re finally doing something you want to do, during regular hours, at that!” You nuzzle into his warm chest, “I’m so happy for you, Jimin. I hope you have fun.” His heart clenches at that; how could you be so fucking caring about him? He knew you’d be surprised, but not genuinely happy for him. His hand glides over the skin between your midriff and skirt, an inkling of a gasp floating out of your throat.

“Sorry,” he whispers, moving his hand higher and locking eyes with yours. Time is always slow with him but now, it’s like it was screaming at you to take the opportunity. Unwinding one of your arms from around his neck, you smooth his hair up so you can see those prepossessing eyes.

“You can touch me,” you confirm just as softly. His features harden and you hope you didn’t read the situation wrong.

“I… I never got to kiss you that night.”

“Then you can kiss me now, if you’d like,” you say, pleading in your voice and it’s all he needs to hear before he burns his lips into yours. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanted this,” he pants between suckles to your bottom lip. He kisses like he dances: powerful and in perfect control with his body, molding it to yours and massaging the skin he just apologized for touching only seconds ago.

You cup his face and look down at him with sultry prowess, “I want you, Jimin. I’ve always thought about this, hoping you would just make a move, idiot.” You dive back into him, his moans prominent when you lick and nip at his lip. He lowers his grip to your ass, squeezing and pushing his hips into your own.

“Well, I’ve always thought about fucking you in this cursed uniform,” he growls, forcing a giggle out of you. Grinding down into him for effect, your mouth travels to his ear so you can state a small confirmation.

“I’m flexible, babe. I’m all yours.”

He hums his praise, latching his mouth onto your neck, laving and peppering blues into your skin before he carries you off the couch. You wrap your legs around him instinctively, “Where are you taking me?”

Heading into a hallway and taking a sharp left, he kicks his door open, “I don’t know about you, hot stuff, but Yoongs doesn’t need to see you getting dicked down in our living room,” he jests. When he lays you back onto the foot of his bed, you briefly scan his room and find it hard to believe that it’s relatively clean, the posters on his walls the only thing that seemed cluttered. This guy was your high school self’s wet dream. Scanning him promiscuously, you chuckle.

“I can be into it,” you drawl playfully.

Earning an unimpressed scoff, he fingers the hem of his shirt, “You’re mine,” he sheds it in a swift pull and throws it to the side cockily. Marveling at each detailed divot and curve of muscle, you can’t help but bite your lip in frustrated anticipation. “Unless, you don’t want me,” he finishes with a tilt of his head. He knew what he was doing, simulating innocence to draw you out of your transfixed stupor to hear those three words string from your mouth. You reach out to touch his abs, tracing over linework of ink and watching him shiver from your touch. Knowing exactly what he wants to hear, you gaze into oblique eyes and mouth the words, “I do want you”.

Goading him on, you lay back and extend your legs above you, shuffling your spandex tantalizingly slow over your skin. Jimin whistles at your show, staring at the white g-string you sported under your skirt and wandering his hands over the supple skin you expose.

“Jesus, you fucking tease. Leave the skirt.” Tittering at his request, you dig your heels into his back to propel him down towards you, his ringed hands keeping himself afloat and a winning smile winking down at you. Bless your heart you didn’t faint right then and there.

He kisses you like a man starved, lips burning hot with desire and aching to be bit—so you give him that. Sinking your teeth gently into the flesh, he punishes such action with a slap to the underneath of your thigh, then holding it close to the side of his abdomen and rolling over with you on top. Practically suffocating from lack of air, you dislodge yourself, quite reluctantly, from his mouth and soothe his complaints with brief kisses to his thick neck.

“Why didn’t we do this—ah, before?” he pants. Sucking a particularly tender spot of his jugular, he moans out and bucks into your hips. You continue your way down, leaving no inch of skin untouched until you reach where his skin ends and the nuisance of clothing began.

“You don’t make things very easy for me. Can I suck you off?”

“Fuck, don’t ask. Just do it. Turn around, though, I’ll finger you at the same time,” he offers, propping himself up on his elbows as you readjust yourself with your head towards his bulge and your ass facing him, knees keeping you up on one side of his torso. “Perfect,” he commends.

Unbuckling his ridiculously tight jeans, you hook your thumbs under the denim and whisper a quick, “Up,” to pull them off when his hips lift off the mattress. Your pride inflates at the sight of his bulge resting in the crook of his thigh, adorned by simple black boxers that hugged him in all the right spots. All but drooling at the member, you place a loving kiss where you know his head resides, mouthing at it gingerly and soaking the material with your saliva.

He ruts into your face as he watches such indecency, “You know, I should probably tell you something,” he says rather seriously, shuffling your skirt up above your ass and mischievously prodding at your sex with his thumb.

“Hmm,” you mumble, sliding his boxers down enough to suck at the pink tip that oozed of precum and spreading the liquid around with your tongue. The bitterness that came with it was all welcomed, slightly sweeter than others you’ve ever tasted and you appreciated it much more when a man this good-looking was laid out before you.

He groans, “Ever heard of a Jacob’s Ladder? Fuck, right there, underneath a bit…” You suck and nip at the skin of his frenulum, knowing he was bound to like small dosages of pain mixed with his pleasure—a guess all too correct when he cries out in ecstasy and gives your ass a light spank.

“A Jacob’s what?”

“Just—just look at it. If you don’t like it then I can just take them out,” he sighs, all too impatient to give you a rundown of whatever a Jacob’s hoo-ha entailed. You perk a brow at his vocabulary, halting your mouth and sliding his boxers the rest of the way down.

If you weren’t riled up before, you were hot, ready, and willing to beg on your knees to be stuffed with Jimin and his… accessories. You understand the term “ladder” now, three rungs of metal pierced on the underside of his shaft and glinting up at you with intimidation. You hope Jimin can’t see the now overflowing amount of arousal oozing out of your pussy, squeezing thighs together in a useless attempt of hiding yourself.

“Fuck, didn’t that hurt?” you question, hovering fingers over the balls of silver that protruded on each side in complete awe.

“Of course it did, honey. It’s all worth it, though. It’ll make you feel good too. Need me to take them out?” You shake your head a little too vigorously, earning a chuckle and his middle finger to slide in between your folds unexpectedly. Yiping at the sudden entrance, you cast a glare over his shoulder with his only response being the curve of his digit.

“C-Can I lick it? Can it get infected if you don’t use a condom?” you bombard him with questions, entirely unfamiliar with the subject and entirely enamored by it.

“It’s all healed up, baby. You can do whatever your little heart desires with it. And I would oh so much prefer going bare,” he confirms, and your heart flips at his pet name for you. That, and the thought of his thick, pierced cock penetrating you condom-less.

You wrap your lips around him once more, unafraid to take more and more of his length until you feel the cold metal—your stopping point. Call it your lack of experience, but you prefer not to catch your teeth on those piercings today. You make up for it by sliding a hand back under his scrunched boxers, fondling his balls as you bob diligently. He curses and struggles to keep his body still, digging another digit between your legs to slow your own ministrations. When it works and you moan around his cock, Jimin can’t help but want to play a little game.

“Should I give you a challenge, babe? It’s super simple. Whoever makes the other cum first gets to request something. Anything. Deal?”

“Deahl,” you muffle, swirling your tongue lavishly around his crown. Everything with Jimin was much more… intriguing. Even your first time having sex was turned into some lusty escapade of unexpected metallic embellishments and cheeky gambles. It made you feel something in your veins, wanting more and more of whatever poison Jimin was.

Taking a breath, you lick broadly over his entire shaft and scarcely taste the titanium—more than anything, it was just cold. Jimin shudders at the feeling, punishing you with a third and final finger and pushing downdowndown into a spot all too sensitive for you to focus.

Try as you might, your now pathetic attempts of sucking him off is all forgotten in your own haze of chasing your orgasm. Instead, you rest your head on his hip and writhe against his hand, fucking back onto it while he simultaneously prods your g-spot over and over again until you see stars.

“Giving up already? You were doing so well for a while, you could’ve won,” he lilts.

“Jimin, please make me cum. Oh god,” you wail, legs straining for just that final push…

“Is this what you want?” He slides his thumb across, swiping whatever he could collect and using it to knead at your neglected clit. It’s all you need, pleasure washing over you in tandem of near oversensitivity, a near scream tearing through your lungs that only comes out in ragged whines against his leg.

“Beautiful, sweetheart. Fuck, you’re ruining my sheets over here,” he criticizes, removing his hand with an obscene squelch and moving around in the bed.

The torpor you caught yourself in didn’t render what he was saying, just letting him move you about so your head rests on his pillows while he places himself between your legs.

“Jiminie,” you babble, “fuck me.” He strokes your hair away from your face and smiles, that cute puppy smile that turns his eyes into crescents. The rest of him, though, is purely sinful. Hair sweaty and pieced to perfection as his body taunted you with toned muscles.

“I don’t think you’re ready, honey,” he answers, “even though you’re dripping in your own cum.” He leans back and stares at your pussy without embarrassment, pulling your knees together and watching the juices flow even more. “I should put it to use.”

You peer up at him, curious as to whatever the hell he’s dreaming of over there and inexplicably stunned when you see his dick between your legs. “J-Jimin, what are you doing?”

“Shh, just keep them closed tight,” he orders, fucking himself between the lips of your heat and the warm skin of your thighs. You can’t help but ravish the sight of him as he slicks himself up, eyeing you down as his hips roll into you agonizingly slow. His piercings graze against your nub occasionally, warmth once again growing in your stomach.

“Fuck, you’re so soft and so wet. Who did this to you, hm?” You moan maniacally, angling your hips as to catch him and push inside, but he only laughs degradingly and intentionally misses.

“You think I’m going to fuck you if you can’t even answer this simple question?” he sneers. “Answer like a good girl, then I’ll fuck you into oblivion.”

You scramble for words, initially incoherent and struggling. “Jimin! Shit, Jimin. You made me this way. Ah, you m-make me so wet, so please put it in, put it in and—ha, aah!”

He shoves his length in like it’s all he knew what to do, your ankles to his shoulders so he can drink up your moans with his reddened lips. He was right—the piercings didn’t feel like any dick you’ve received before, it was so much better. This was pornographic, it was so good. He all but pistols into you, his cock grazing places previously untouched. Indulging in his heaven sent strokes, you cry and groan at each relentless thrust.

“Hush, baby, Yoongi’s going to hear your pretty self,” he warns, but you don’t give a shit. If anything, you moan louder with a know-all glint in your eye, testing Jimin’s patience. “Brat,” he spits.

He pounds into you repeatedly, completely removing himself before filling you up again and again and again. Between the pressure to your g-spot and the added stimulation from his Jacob’s Ladder—your stomach heaves, an unfamiliar feeling washing over your abdomen contrary to anything you’ve ever experienced.

“Oh, Jimin, wait!” you sob, halting his hips from another brutal shove a little too late. The second he pulls out, your second orgasm (and first ever untouched orgasm) of the night reigns over, briefly showering his lower stomach in your own wet arousal.

“Holy shit, that’s so fucking hot. Did you just… squirt on me?” he growls, not taking the time to hear your answer as he lifts you into his lap, legs wrapped around his muscular back and arms gripping around his shoulders for dear life.

He sinks back into you deliciously, filling you to the brim with your added weight and rutting up into you to chase his own release. Everything is soaked and sticky, Jimin’s ragged breathing and groans so close to your ear that you’re sure it’ll be engrained into your memory forever, his thrusts so deep inside you wail once more.

Consequently, the banging on the wall next to you comes as no surprise, Yoongi’s angry, “Shut the fuck up!” clear as day. Jimin waves it off.

“Don’t listen baby. Moan louder for me. Tell me where you want my cum.”

The slaps of skin become louder; it wouldn’t be long before Jimin came. “Inside, Jiminie, please. Cum inside me, pump me full,” you squeal, lust sparking inside you knowing that his roommate could hear you getting fucked senseless.

One, two, three more aching pounds before he spills into you, his pretty moans music to your ears. You flop back as soon as he takes himself out, suddenly aching all over from how much he stretched your legs and groaning at the pain.

You slap his eager hand away when he fingers his cum back into your abused lips, “That hurts, idiot.” He smiles and sucks your intermingled cum off his fingers with a pop.

“We taste good together,” he husks. Fuck. “By the way. You came first. Stay the night?”

You oblige with or without the pressure of the bet, dog-tired from your beating and not even fathoming the trek back to your own room. Jimin takes charge in your state of haziness, washing you off in his shower, replacing your uniform with a t-shirt of his own and laying you beside him on his mattress (sheets replaced and refreshed).

“You have piercings in your dick,” you state in the middle of the quiet.

Jimin snorts at the outburst, looping an arm around your side and melding his body to yours, “Yeah, is it weird?”

“… Robot dick,” you whisper, words cracking at the face of your laughter.

“Oh my god.”

“So, when you’re going through metal detectors at airports and whatever, do you have to tell them that the metal’s in your penis? Do they have to check?” Titters are awarded with light jabs to your side, which are then led to screams and kicks to his legs.

Yoongi bursts through Jimin’s door, brows stitched together in heated anger parallel to the flames of hell, “I swear to fucking god, if you two don’t quiet down I’ll mount your heads on my wall, it’ll make a great decoration.”

“What the hell, what if we were naked? Don’t just go busting through—”

“Yeah because you obviously care if I know you two are fucking. ‘Don’t listen, baby! Tell me where you want my cum, baby!’” Yoongi mocks. Pillows are flying and insults are thrown as you watch them bicker sleepily, all fading into white noise as you begin to drift off.

Sleep itself feels like a blink, so exhausted that you don’t dream. Waking in the same position that you were last conscious in, the only difference in picture is the fact that: A) the sun is shining through Jimin’s skylight and B) Jimin is no longer in bed with you.

But before you can even question where he’s run off to, his sly self sneaks back into the bedroom, shirtless and face clean from washing up just now. You don’t even hide the fact that you look down to check out his tight briefs, metal detector in your brain trying to scope it out.

“You’re awake. Sorry if I was loud,” he smiles, crawling on top of you as you stretch out like a mangled cat. You shake your head, combing his hair back with your nails as he dips down into your chest. “I like when you wear my shirts.”

“That’s pretty stereotypical,” you whisper out, voice low and raspy from your slumber. This isn’t fair, you think, he got to brush his teeth already.

He sits up and gives you A Look, making you giggle and giving you the leverage to feel up his abs as he flexes haughtily.

“I can get used to this,” you purr.

“I bet you could,” he mumbles into your neck, nipping at the places he already marked last night. He doesn’t push, just relishes in your warmth and fondles you carefully as you continue to wake up and it makes you shiver.

“I wish you would’ve done this a long time ago,” you sigh.

“You hated me.”

“You didn’t make it easy for me to like you,” you retort, gasping when he bites your collarbone, “Now—Now I like you.”

He stops abruptly and pulls away, landing on his side with an elbow and tilting his head towards you, “Well, I hope you don’t start liking me too much.”

You squint, “W-Why? Don’t tell me this was just a one night stand or anything.”

“No! I mean, not just one night or whatever. I just—this is just casual, right?”

You all but bite your tongue to keep from lashing out, “What do you mean ‘casual’? You didn’t say anything about ‘casual’.”

“Oh, Y/N, c’mon. Did you really think we should date? Look at us, baby. We’re just not… each other’s types, you know?”

It’s about time you get up, shoving aside his warm blankets and grabbing your soiled uniform from the floor, “No, Jimin. I don’t know. I thought you were being genuine with me.”

“Hey, no, don’t leave,” he grabs your arm before you leave his bedroom, “Okay, there was some miscommunication. I’m not trying to be mean. Can I just… I don’t know, think about it? I’m just not used to this.”

Looking into his eyes for some sort of confirmation, your tensions subside. “I’m not a toy. If you don’t want to be with me, just say it.” The hurt he feels in your tone breaks his heart, for once. Would he really be willing to try something he knows won’t work?

For you, maybe.

“I do like you, Y/N. Just give me some time.” He pulls your arm once more, hoping you’ll stay. But you draw the line and pry his hand off politely.

“Of course I’ll give you time. I’ll see you later, okay?” He nods understandingly. He can’t feel butthurt when he’s the one putting you on ice, he knows that. So Jimin watches you leave in his shirt, mind clouded more so than when you arrived.

a/n: yay! you made it through the first part! if you liked it, feel free to let me know or ask any questions to the characters! xx, selene

#ficswithluv #btsguild #btssmutclub #bts #bangtan sonyeondan #bangtan smut #bts smut #jimin #park jimin #jimin smut #jimin imagines #kpop smut #kpop imagines #punk!jimin #jimin is pierced #jimin fic #bts fic #one shot #reader insert #jimin x reader

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    [ ? ] Are these all the options you have for commissions?     [ A ] These are primarily just examples of things I've done consistently in the past! If you have a more 'custom' idea, we can certainly discuss it! I've been doing pixel art for over four years, so I have some decent experience, but like every artist I have limits to my current abilities. You can see both my Tumblr and DeviantArt galleries for more examples, including the options for the line styles, animations, and shading!     [ ? ] What ARE all those options under the examples?     [ A ] Hard lines means the piece will have "hard", solid black lines between each "section" of the piece: the outline, and between all the different colors, etc. Lineless means that rather than having that solid black line, I use a slightly darker shade of each color to outline them, like the full body dragon! This gives it a softer, 'lineless' look.     Cell shading means that there's just one color used to shade, rather than a blend. The Kakashi doll on the far left has cell shading: just one color in a hard shape. Smooth shading means what it sounds like: a few colors are blended from dark to light to make the shadows smoother!     I do a few very basic animations for certain dolls or icons when requested. Typically this refers to a one-pixel "bob", and a blink cycle. I can also have a doll open its mouth and bring up a small speech bubble if you'd like them to say something! Please bear in mind that animation takes additional time and effort, and though not required, additional support is appreciated for animated pieces!     [ ? ] Why are there things you refuse to draw?     [ A ] For the most part, it's simply a matter of preference. For others, it's a matter of ability. Some things are just a bit too complex for me to feel I can pull it off in a fashion consistent with the rest of my work, and therefore being worth your money! Hence a limit on complex poses and the number of characters per shot, or complex designs, like mecha. Other things like the ship limitations are just personal preferences that make me uncomfortable. The NSFW ban is mostly due to most hosting sites not liking to host mature artwork...and also a matter of both my ability, and personal preference.     [ ? ] What constitutes NSFW?     [ A ] For me, this includes any nudity that shows genitals - nipples and / or breasts are fine. This also includes anything sexual, including any and all fetishes, even if genitals are not shown. I also do not do heavy gore. I may expand this umbrella term if anything not already covered comes up!     [ ? ] I can't afford a commission, but I'd like to help! What can I do?     [ A ] You can share this comm sheet and / or my art with your friends! Getting the word out might mean finding someone able and willing to order a comm, which of course is a big help!     [ ? ] Do you do requests?     [ A ] Unfortunately, not at the moment. If you'd like me to draw something for you and the comms are open, you're more than welcome to order something! While I do do personal art for myself and for friends, I can't make free art for everyone. In the future I may do something akin to raffles, but for now, we're starting with the commissions!     [ ? ] Can I donate without ordering a commission?     [ A ] You most certainly can, and it's very much appreciated, and would be a huge help! Of course it is NOT an expectation: no one has to donate if they can't or don't want to. But if you just want to throw some general support in to help me keep creating, you're more than welcome, and I'd appreciate it tremendously     [ ? ] Do you accept DeviantArt points?     [ A ] I do not. To put it bluntly, DA points can't pay my bills. I have nothing I need that DA points can buy, so I only work with money. Sorry!     [ ? ] Do you do anything like art trades?     [ A ] For the moment, no - but I might in the future! I'm open to the possibility, but for now (and for this post's purpose), I'm working on commissions! If I ever open up art trades, I'll be sure to make another about it!     [ ? ] How is best to contact you?     [ A ] Any of the above listed social media! Here on DA, please send a note with a subject line about commissions. On Tumblr, you can send an ask (off anon) which I will reply to privately. You can also send an IM! Email also works: just include commissions in the subject line. I do my best to check all of these sites a few times a day, but there may be times where I'm limited. I'll try to post ahead of time so you know why I'm not responding promptly! Otherwise, it could take me about a day to get back to you. Please be patient! I have other responsibilities. I may also take hiatuses if I feel the need. If I go more than a few days without responding and haven't given any warning, there's probably something keeping me from my messages, and I'll do my best to get back to you as soon as I'm able!     [ ? ] What's your policy on refunds?     [ A ] So long as I haven't finished flat coloring your piece, you can get a full refund, of course! But once the piece is lined AND colored, I've put in a good bit of work, so I'm afraid I won't be able to refund you. As stated on the sheet, you can ask for an update on the piece any time! And I will send you the cleaned sketch once it's finished to see if there's anything you'd like changed. Though please bear in mind some things can differ between sketching and lining, especially when shrinking down to pixel. A sketch is a general outline, not the full product!     [ ? ] Are there any other circumstances where you might refuse a commission?     [ A ] Honestly it depends. I hope not to encounter any other reasons beyond my general rules, but I DO retain the right to say no to any commission for any reason, which I don't have to disclose. If I do say no, please respect that decision. It's never anything personal.     [ ? ] Where does the art go once it's finished?     [ A ] Any commissioned art, by default, will be posted to my DeviantArt, my Tumblr, and on Ko-fi! I'll also send you a copy / link through whatever means you contacted me with. If you'd like your art to be private, you need only ask. I will then only send YOU the art, and it will NOT be posted anywhere else. I can also post the art anonymously if you’d like it posted, but your name not attached to it.     [ ? ] How can I use my commission(s)?     [ A ] Any way you like UNLESS it's commercial - in other words, if you make any money using the artwork. Please also do not trade or sell the artwork. Otherwise, feel free to use it for any personal use you'd like! You can also repost the art so long as you provide a link to my original post. If your comm wasn't publicly posted, a link back to any of my social media will suffice! Just always be sure to use proper credit so people know where the art came from! That way they can find my pages, and maybe get a commission of their own!     [ ? ] Do you do fanart?     [ A ] I do! My commissions are all one-off, unique jobs, and I'm hardly about to impact any IP markets. So long as it's a large fandom (no Disney, though - that's one I won't touch), and my art wouldn't greatly impact the profits and livelihood of other creators, I can do fanart. But I DO prefer to do original art! It's great to work with new designs, and help give original characters more art for them! Gimme OCs to draw!     [ ? ] Can you design a character for me, like a custom adoptable?     [ A ] I can! Just bear in mind that I'll need as many details as possible to make something that fits your vision! I'll also need to work with you more than typical to be sure we get it as accurate as possible, so be prepared for a lot of communication until we get it looking as you want!     [ ? ] Can you do gifts - in other words, can I order art for another person?     [ A ] I do, and you certainly can! Just be sure to let me know who the gift is for, so I can tag them! If they don't have any of the social media I use, you can just give me a name or screen name to post with it. A gift will just cost you the same as any art you'd order for yourself! Also please do be sure you have permission to commission art of characters owned by another person!     [ ? ] What do you mean by 'item'?     [ A ] Each individual pixel piece! One lone pixel doll of 150 pixels would be four dollars! But if you want two dolls interacting, it's four dollars EACH. So eight dollars. That's because I still have to sketch, ink, color, shade, and possibly animate EACH doll! Twice the effort means twice the price.

#commissions #pixel art #pixel doll #pixel icon #pixel cursor

[animus-wild-magic]

Printing your comic, Part II: The printing process

Hello there, and welcome guys to part II of this article. On last week’s post we’ve talked about some printing vocabulary and some basic terms, and now we’re going to discuss some settings and common problems you want to check before you send your comic to the printing shop!

Page count: 

Most comic creators plan for some time on their pages, set specific compositions to be shown in spread pages and even take the extra step of leaving a shocking plot twist to be revealed right after the flipping of a page. And because of that, here’s another relevant thing to consider if you plan on printing: page count. Take a look at a comic book close to you, and changes are it is a saddle stitch, as we’ve previously discussed. Because of that, each page actually corresponds to half the paper sheet in which it was printed, and the paper sheet is folded in the middle and attached to the spine by the staples.  Considerer also that there’s a front and a back side of this sheet, which means each one sheet corresponds to four pages. Because of that, you want to make sure your final page count inside your book is a multiple of four. For example, if your comic has 35 pages, you’ll just need to add an empty (or not) page at the end of it and make it 36 pages long. If your comic is 37 pages, you’ll have to stretch it to 40, so might as well use those compulsory extra pages for some extra material, sketches and character bios!

Resolution settings: 

Another very relevant thing to keep in mind is image resolution. Many artists create comic strips for the internet, both desktop and mobile, and sometimes the resolution for tis medias is lower than what you need for printing. Remember that the standard US comic size is way bigger than your cell phone screen, and this final file format should be measured in inches or centimeters, not in pixels. I’d in fact recommend creating pages with about 150% of the final format size just to be sure. Another important measurement of image quality is the DPI rage, which stands for “dots per inch”. This is the amount of dots that will be effectively printed per inch of paper in your final comic. You’ll need at least 300 DPI to ensure a good printing quality, though some print shops will recommend 450 DPI.

File format:

Now that you know your digital file size and proper resolution, let’s see what kind of digital format you should send to your printer. Remember we’ve talked about how any sort of printing process is actually a translation from light color to pigment color, so there will be a change in what you see on your screen to what you get on your printed comic, but we want to make the best of both. So here are some of the ost commonly known output format for images:

JPEG (or JPG): saving your files in this format keeps the file size quite small due to its efficient compression, but also because of that, you lose image quality. What this format does is it groups similar pixels together to save space, which may generate color bands in areas of your paintings. This conversion is also permanent, so the previous data from these compressed area is lost once you save the file.

PNG: The most commonly known advantage is the possibility of saving transparent backgrounds, which can be very handy. PNG files also go through compression, but without any quality loss, which means you can open and edit it as many times as you want without effectively losing data.

PDF: Most printers will suggest you to send your files in this format, and for a good reason. A PDF image is identical to its source in any way, and it’s the ideal file format for printing graphic design material, photographs and also your comic. Also, PDF allows you to save your entire comic within one single file, with all of the pages already in their proper place, and you can even add the printing marks we’ve previously talked about if necessary. Most painting and art softwares can export files in this format, but you can even use online conversion tools for this.

It’s also a good idea to add a note about vector images. Unlike the file formats above, which are all what we call raster graphics, a vector graphic image can have different file formats - and very different properties. To put it simply, a vector image is composed by a series of mathematical equations, it is a collection of points, lines and curves  that can be put into numbers like geographical coordinates. But don’t worry: you don’t have to deal with any of the math to get acquainted with vector images! 

Through the use of graphic tools, producing vector images can feel very familiar and intuitive. The most notorious quality of vectorized images is that they’re very reliable and can be expanded (or reduced) without any data loss. That’s a great solution for logos, so if you can get your own comic brand in vector image, this can come in hand when producing banners and other bigger products. Also, many people will use vector softwares and tools to create speech bubbles and lettering for their comics. That can make it easier to edit those elements later on, and it  also makes it easier to control and create a standard visual identity for your comic. Since most of us will not effectively draw our comics in vector based software, this means speech bubbles and lettering will come as a later stage of the comic production.

So let’s just take a final look at these formats: JPEG,  PNG the native PSD (Adobe) are raster graphic images. They are composed of pixels and cannot be enlarged beyond their original format without losing data. These are probably the output format of most of you artwork, so be sure to always produce your comic pages at large sizes and 300 DPI. Vector graphic images include the formats: SGV and EPS, along with the native AI (Adobe). Vector images are composed by curves and occupy less space. PDF is a bit of a wild card here: it can be both raster and vector, and it’s your exporting setup that will define this. PDF is great to maintain all of the data and image quality, and in my opinion is your best friend for printing purposes.

Printing process:

Now we know the proper terms and how to communicate with the print shop staff, and we also know what kind of file we need to export and send in order to get things properly printed. But what kind of printing process are we going to use? Let’s talk about the differences, advantages and disadvantages of the two main printing methods offered by print shops: offset and digital printing.

First of all, those two types of printing process are created in different machines, which different technologies, and as a consequence the color representation that comes out of them differs. Remember, any printing process is already a translation from the data on your computer screen, the language of light, to the language of pigment, so you’ll have to deal with slight changes during this transformation process. 

The offset machine is generally a bigger, bulky engine with typically four sections, one for each printing color: cyan, magent, yellow and black. In order to print something, there’s a metal plate to apply each corresponding ink color to its place in the paper sheet, counting four metal plates per image. That means your image will be split into four colors and them those four images will be applied one on top of the other until the final figure is built. It’s a pretty fascinating process, and if your print shop allows you to take a look at the machines, it will be easier for you to understand what’s going on there.

Digital printing will also use four colors, but they’ll be applied using electrostatic rollers, which is another very fascinating thing to watch. This printing process uses toner instead of ink, and the peculiar thing about it that it’s not a liquid, but a very thin powder, which will adhere to the paper sheet according to the data on the programming of those electrostatic rollers. In this process, each color will take its turn as it is laid on paper, but there’s no need for creating the metal plates previously.

So now that you understand how both those machines work, there are some considerations regarding what process to use to print your comic. The most relevant for us comic creators one is the cost and benefit concerning the total amount of copies. As you can see, setting up an offset machine takes way more time, and it also consumes more time and needs more manutention.  However, once the setup is made and the process starts, it’s way more efficient, and therefore the unit is cheaper in the long run. Digital printing takes way less time of preparation, and it is cheaper because of that at a smaller number of units. Digital printers will also have a faster turnaround time.

So, in a nutshell:

Offset printing: Good for 2.000+ units, takes more time to produce. The total investment will be big, but the unit cost will be lower, so it’s good for big press. (Tip: some printing shops will actually keep or allow you to keep the metal plates from your current run, so that if you choose to print again in the future, this stage is already executed. Ask your print shop about that!)

Digital printing: Good for anything from 1 to 2.000 copies, a short run print. As you get closer to the 2.000 copies mark, be sure to check out that limbo and see which process is better suited for your specific needs. Digital printing offers fast turnaround time and the initial cost is cheaper, though the unit will be more expensive.

That’s it for today’s article, guys! This time we’ve covered everything process-related that I saw as convenient to comic makers. If you still have any questions about the printing process itself, please let me know! 

Next week, we’ll talk about the most common problems along the way, how to avoid some of them, and how to fix others after they've been identified!

You might also like to read:  How to print your comic Part I and How to print your comic part III  

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If you enjoy this content and comic, please considerer  supporting us at Patreon!

#howtowritecomics #how to write stories #how to make comics #how to print comics #making comics #creating comics #printing comics

[artdis]

What Do Player Pianos, IBM Punchcards, Telepathy and Elon Musk’s Neuralink Have In Common?

This is a player piano punch sheet or score taken from a rolled up drum. The holes make the keys move. It is a very simple pattern that translates into musical notes.

This is a decoding of “neural spikes” according to scientists at Elon Musk’s brain computer company Neuralink. The spikes are pictured in single boxes, and many spikes when they fire make a pattern. From that pattern you can begin to decode thought. According to Neuralink, “Everything you hear or think is all action potentials, its action spikes and it feels so real, it feels very real.”

This is an early IBM computer punch card, and the basic pattern recognition of the presence or absence of holes in predefined patterns led to everything we know today about computers. Though IBM introduced the first cards in 1928, they had already been in use to ‘program’ cloth in the Jacquard loom in 1804, making gorgeous silks and tapestries.

I think we are basically back in the same position as we were when IBM first made the computer punch card in 1928 in terms of brain research and decoding thought. Neuralink is putting together elements in brain research that 100 years from now, or even 50 years from now will have tremendous repercussions. The company did not invent all of the aspects of technology it is using to put things together, but they did improve upon existing tech and brought it all together. 

THE SURGICAL ROBOT

The Neuralink robot doing an implantation

Neuralink works by extracting electrical signals from neurons. In order to do that it has to implant extremely thin wires in the brain to access and read those signals onto a nanochip. Before it can do that, it has to make a precision surgical robot machine operated by neuroscientists to insert the wires - so it did. Apparently there was some DARPA money thrown into the mix somewhere along the way. The robotic surgeon has to implant tiny wires in between blood vessels and neurons, not on them. This can only be achieved through microscopes and nanometer precision. The implant needle is 24 microns small. Tiny threads are about 1/10 of a human hair, which is about the same size as a neuron. The needle to implant the wire is 24 microns small.  You can open the skull, insert the threads,  put in a tiny chip, and then glue the skull shut. The chip functions as a wireless bluetooth signal.

THE WIRES

This picture shows thin nano threads pasted onto a fingertip. The thinness of this wire is the big issue DARPA was trying to solve with Moldavian wire from Paradromics, that I previously blogged about in 2017, but Musk beat them to the punch. He wrote about his breakthroughs here.

This is the different new design of the threads called a “linear edge”, which are made of layered polymers. They are so are super duper thin they can’t bee seen with a human eye, so they need the special robot that inserts the threads onto the surface of the brain. Another reason is the brain’s surface moves with inhalation and exhalation, and the robot  can account for this natural movement. The wires and chip have to record the output from neurons. They are micro fabricated as precisely as the size of an electron beam. It is important to separate the signal to noise ratio in the chips, as they work with nanometer sizes of light. A new design. 350 nanometers,is smaller than visible light.

This image is the crux of how Neuralink acquires the signal. Here you see the neuron sending out an electrical spike and a thread next to it picking up the impulse. The electrical spike is the bulls eye. The copper colored needle is actually the implanted wire thread. You need to be 60 microns away or less to read the signals, so you really need to be under the skull. This is a graphic representation

This is a photo of the real thing, with lots of wires precision implanted into brain tissue. If you look really closely you will see they skirt around the blood vessels and neuron branches, but don’t touch any of them. Its sort of like an amazing game of darts, but the goal is to miss the bull’s eye of the vessels.

HISTORY OF IMPLANT CHIPS

This is a short history of brain research about making chips to implant in the brain. At this point the Utah array is still the most used implant chip in academia. Neuralinks chips are way, way faster and smaller. Their research builds on a century of neuroscience research and a decade of neuro engineering research. More advanced applications with advanced innovations will follow.

CHIPS AND PODS

These are early iterations of chips and devices made by Neurlink. Looks like Arduino 101, more or less.

The N1 sensor - the beginning of the sophisticated bean sized implant that goes into the skull and contains the chips.

The actual chips are made on super thin nano wafers in a hermetic environment so there is no dust. They are also super duper thin. A 4 x 4 millimeter chip has a thousand electrodes,and  implanting up to  10 chips is feasible. At this point the best FDA approved chip implant for Parkinsons Disease only has 10 electrodes. The Neuralink chips read and write, and are 1000 times more powerful than what is publicly approved. They will get better with newer versions.

Shades of Cyborg Neil Harbisson and his Eyeborg!  The Neuralink implant with four chips receive information from the threads, and sends them to an output area for batteries and firmware. 

This is the size of the output piece, like an earphone.You can upgrade the firmware on the pod on the ear, it is not the actual implant but connects to it. It will be controlled through an iPhone app. Probably Android as well.

SIGNAL PROCESSING

Waves of neural spikes from an array from implanted  threads that are being read out on a computer. monitor The color screen shows the brain at work, and traces of electrodes from single threads. Each trace is a voltage waveform in time. If you focus on one trace, it shows voltage deflections, or spikes per wave. It occurs when a neuron has an action potential, because that is the core information that is recorded.  Then the algorithm is decoded, which means capturing the intended information. You just have to think about something and build up the decoding data from that information or thought, and you can begin to interpret movement, memory, and  many other different types of experiences.

This is a basic diagram of signal processing from the chip - how they get the stuff out of the wires and threads to actually show the spikes. Neuralink said “Everything we care about is contained in the statistics of spikes (inside the brain).” So it goes back to the basic IBM punchcards, or the player piano drum roll - decipher the pattern and you decipher the thought.

Here is their basic logic analogue to digital conversion that is necessary to change action potential spikes to computer code..Calling Alvin Lucier, John Cage, Nam June Paik, David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum - or Duh, this has been going on with the brain, changing analog to digital since 1965 in the music world.

Spike rasters in the brain - The top is the brainwave spikes pointed at by the blue arrows, and the bottom is the beginning of pattern recognition of individual neurons. There should be one pixel per electrode. They are on-chip spike detectors. The methods for detection are thresholding signals or directly characterizing the shape. The Neuralink scientists claim they can identify different neurons from same electrode based on their shape. The engineers had to modify the algorithms and scale them to compress neural data up to 200 times. It takes only 900 nano seconds  to compute the signal, faster than the brain knows that the signal even occurred. They can also stimulate any combination of up to 64 channels

One good use of this in the next few years is creating visual feedback for the blind by targeting the visual cortex to create an image better than a dot matrix image - or computer vision basics meets brain wetware. The scientists want to not only read out, but read into the brain. You can read into the brain by passing a current in the electrode. This causes the cell to fire an action potential, like for cochlear implants, or a way for the eye to restore vision. You can also use this technique in the brain to restore the sense of touch or vision. The visual cortex has maps, a spatial map (orange section of the brain in graphic). If you stimulate a point in that area, a blind person sees a point of light or phosphene. The idea is you can stimulate areas of the brain in the visual cortex to resemble a dot matrix level of the world. There are also parts of the brain that control orientation, color, size and speed of moving objects, and once you figure out what they are, and where to stimulate them, you can generate a more comprehensive image that a blind person can experience. Neuralink wants a device with electrodes that are small enough, but with high density that can do better than a dot matrix image.

The first iteration of their implant will have three different types that can go from a mobile device to a mouse or keyboard on a Bluetooth signal.  Neuralink needs to get FDA approval. Right now they are working on patients with complete paralysis so it is for serious neurological needs, and idea is to make it really safe. 

Who needs Google maps when you can tap into someone’s brain algorithm in their Hippocampus which contains spatial orientation. Here is a rendition of someone who really knows San Francisco, and they can send you pattern signals as you wander through the park and direct you telepathically - voila!

THE PURPOSE

Musk gave a number of reasons for his very public video presentation. The first he shamelessly admitted, was to recruit for new talent to Neuralink. He then framed the motivation of his company as wanting to solve brain ailments, spinal disorders, or catastrophic injuries like a broken neck or spine,. He admitted it won’t happen quickly, and kept mentioning the need for FDA approval. He wants to make his devices as cheap and accessible as a Lasik-like device.

“Hopefully,” he said, “AI is a benign scenario. You can chose to have a neural implant if you want, it is not a mandatory thing... We already have digital super intelligence - our access to a computer and a smart phone. The input speed in the human brain is fast, due to our vision, but the output speed is slow because we have to type information into a computer. We are constrained by human bandwidth and mechanics. “ 

But then he dropped the Neuralink AI bomb -  that he believes that we “ultimately (will) achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence” (if you want it at a civilization level scale). Then he added, “two people with Neuralink could have telepathy, a new kind of communication, conceptual telepathy, it has to be consensual”.

So the new “me too” movement will concern having consensual telepathy #metooconsensualtelepathy.

 *Screen shot photos all taken from publicly available Neuralink YouTube video here.

#planet 3d #Ellen Pearlman #new aesthetic #Neuralink #BCI #elon musk #telepathy

[howtobuytech]

How to Buy a TV

It's stupid how difficult it is to buy a TV these days. It should be easy enough to walk into a Best Buy, look at the wall of TVs, and pick the one you think looks the best. Unfortunately, most people can't really see a difference between brands. To make things worse, most TV manufacturers use a special in-store display mode that basically turns the brightness way up to make the screen stand out among the others. Then a lot of people are disappointed when they take a TV home and it doesn't look like the display unit at the store.

Things can be even worse when you shop online. Most online retailers simply spew a bunch of numbers at you to make it seem like a particular brand has super advanced technology. The reality is that most people don't understand what 1080p resolution or 60Hz refresh rate means. Depending on your needs, higher numbers aren't always better or worth the markup.

The purpose of this guide is to help you get past the marketing jargon to help you not get scammed. Here are the 6 steps you should follow to pick out your next TV:

1. Decide what screen size best fits your needs. Note that TVs are measured diagonally, from either the top left corner to the bottom right or the top right to the bottom left. That means a 55 inch TV has a screen that's 47.8 inches wide and 26.9 inches tall. Keep that in mind when you're measuring or planning out how big of a TV will fit in a particular space. Obviously bigger means more expensive, so keep in mind that a living room centerpiece is going to cost much more than a small screen in your bedroom.

2. Choose the resolution of the screen. These days, you'll generally see either 4K Ultra HD (aka 1440p) TVs or 1080p TVs with the occasional lower-end 720p sprinkled in. To explain what those numbers mean, every screen is made up of a grid of thousands or millions of little dots called pixels. Each pixel emits different colored light such that all of those pixels lit up together produce the image on your screen. The resolution of a screen tells you how many pixels it has. The more pixels you have, the better the screen can reproduce an image of real life. If you think back to an old video game, those were produced with tens or hundreds of pixels, so the image looks blurry or blocky. Whereas games nowadays are produced with millions of pixels, so they look almost identical to real life.

Resolution is a little tricky for the average person, because it can be difficult to see a difference between say 1080p and 4K Ultra HD. For most people who are used to a 1080p TV at home, 4K appears to be only a very slight improvement. However, if you're used to looking at a 4K screen, going back down to 1080p (or even lower like 720p) generally appears to be a much bigger difference.

These days, I would definitely recommend 4K. We're at the point where there's plenty of 4K video content (like on Netflix) and game consoles (like the Xbox One X and Playstation 4 Pro) can even play games at the higher resolution. A 1080p TV at this point will become outdated very quickly in the next few years.

3. Decide if you want to pay more for HDR. If you do, look for a TV that specifies either HDR 10 or Dolby Vision (many TVs support both). Many manufacturers will try to fool you by saying a TV has HDR without specifying one or both of those technical standards.

HDR or high-dynamic-range refers to a wider range of brightness the pixels on your screen can produce. In real life, light and dark are very apparent, so there's a stark contrast between looking up into the sun versus looking at a shadow. Most screens have a hard time reproducing that contrast. You might notice a lot of times when you're looking at a sunset on your TV for example, the image looks kind of flat and not totally real. A TV with HDR will be better at producing that shift in brightness, so that the image looks more realistic.

Unless you have a limited budget, I would recommend buying a TV with HDR. If you watch a 4K HDR movie on Netflix for example, you might be amazed at how much more real the image looks than it might on a more muted screen. Buying an HDR TV now is also probably a good investment for the future, as more and more video content will support it.

4. Decide on the refresh rate you're looking for. Higher refresh rates can get expensive very quickly, but they can also make a huge difference depending on what you use your TV for. The standard numbers you'll see are 60Hz, 120Hz, and 240Hz.

A TV is sort of like a super advanced flip book. It displays motion by flipping through tons of still images. The faster you flip through, the more fluid the motion looks. The slower you flip through, the more unnatural or blurry it looks. 60Hz (pronounced like the word "hurts") means it shows you 60 images per second. The difference in refresh rate becomes apparent when there's a lot of motion on screen. So for example, a football game will look much better on a 120Hz screen because it refreshes fast enough to keep up with the players on screen, whereas a 60Hz screen might look a little blurry as players dart across the field.

If you're buying a new TV to watch sports or to play video games, I recommend spending up for a TV with 120Hz. If you're mostly planning to watch TV or movies, it might be hard to justify spending up for anything over 60Hz. Unless you're simply looking for the top of the line TV, 240Hz is usually not worth the price. While some people can see a difference, the human eye can hardly distinguish between 120 and 240Hz.

5. Figure out how many and what kind of inputs and outputs you need. Basically this means you need to ask yourself what all you're going to be plugging into the TV. If you have 3 game consoles and a Blu-ray player, you probably shouldn't get a TV with only two HDMI ports, or you'll be sorry to find out you'll need to buy additional hardware like an HDMI switcher. Additionally, if you want to connect a sound system, make sure the TV can support the type of cable your system uses (usually 3.5mm, analog optical audio, or HDMI).

There are different types of HDMI ports that you might want to be aware of, but I won't get into those because it's not relevant for most average people.

6. Decide if you care about "smart" features. This essentially boils down to whether you want apps built into the TV or if you already have a box like a Roku/Apple TV/Xbox/etc. that you're going to plug into the TV anyway. Most TVs these days have smart features by default, so it's actually kind of hard to get a TV without smart features these days. The important thing to know is that you shouldn't pay more for these features if you're already planning to plug in another box to play Netflix, Hulu, or whatever else.

7. (Bonus Step if you want to get a little nerdier) Choose the display technology. The display technology is basically how the pixels are lit up. The standard options nowadays are LED LCD and OLED. If the manufacturer doesn't specify OLED, then it likely falls under the LED LCD category. Samsung and other brands tend to be extremely confusing about this type of thing. They'll use terms like QLED or SUHD, but at the end of the day, they're really just LED LCD displays.

OLEDs are generally much more expensive, but the benefit is that they tend to have better contrast between light and dark areas of the screen. Because LED LCD panels generally use backlighting, it's hard to make one part of the screen bright and a different part of the screen dark. With OLED however, the screen can light up pixels individually, which makes for a more realistic looking image.

To wrap up, my philosophy for TV shopping is actually a little different than shopping for other products. When shopping for a TV, I would recommend setting your budget after deciding what features you must have. For most things, it makes sense to set your limit and then pick the best option within that restriction. However, a TV is a long-term purchase and a product that typically sits prominently in your living room. In my mind, it makes sense to decide what you want and then save up and only buy when you have enough money to get the product you want. Most people buy a TV every 5-10 years. However, most people buy a smartphone for example every 1-3 years. It makes more sense to splurge on the less frequent purchase rather than the purchase you know you're going to replace in a relatively short period of time.

I hope this clears up some of the marketing jargon for you. Let me know down below if this cleared things up for you!

#tech #tech tips #tv #technology #how to