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brasskier · 3 years

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Inspired by a prompt from @gods-no-longer-tread-here, wherein Jaskier is tripping balls, Geralt is a recovering addict, and they’re both idiots.

Read it on my ao3 or below the cut:

Jaskier was tripping fucking balls. That was the point, he realized ironically somewhere in the murky crevices of his mind. The walls shuddered in careful tempo with his every stuttering breath, one of his friends mumbled about something languidly to his side, and if he stared long enough he was confident he might be able to count enough pixels to gauge the exact resolution with which he viewed the world. Colors melted into each other, into the music - Drake, maybe? He hadn't picked it - that floated somewhere in his periphery, into Jaskier himself. He was incredibly thirsty, so, so thirsty, and all he could remember were some cans of PBR and La Croix stocked haphazardly in the fridge that he wasn't sure he'd be able to tell apart anymore. He stumbled gracelessly, feet shuffling and knocking into each other.

"Jask?" His friend called to him - which one, he wasn't sure - and he froze, or at least tried to, pitching forward and catching on the doorframe. His friend faced him, and it was Essi. Or, it should've been Essi. Half of her face was gone, replaced by a black void accentuated only by an intangible flash of yellow where her eye should've been; the other half was skinned and charred, all blackened tendons and oozing blood. Jaskier stumbled back, tripped over the doorframe, sprawled his arms out in a clumsy, futile attempt to catch himself.

"What the fuck," he panted, watching in horror as the black hole devoured the rest of her face until she was gone altogether. His breath heaved and caught in his throat while the walls continued to rattle with him. Time, already limping along sluggishly, seemed to screech to a halt completely. He ran a hand through his hair - it felt thick and wet like the black trash bags of spaghetti "intestines" they used to prepare in boyscouts for their annual haunted house. His heart bucked uncooperatively in his chest, and for a moment he thought he might just faint. Jaskier was tripping fucking balls. And this was not a good trip.

No matter, no matter. Just get something to drink. If it's the seltzer it'll hydrate you; if it's the beer maybe it'll ease the comedown. He dragged his legs until they're beneath him and, brain buzzing about airily in his skull, gave up on walking and resolved to crawl his way to the fridge. Except, he just couldn't fucking reach. He jutted a hand out, fingers outstretched and grasping, but it's just past his fingertips. And every time he thought he'd drawn closer it was still just shy of his reach. He wanted to cry, but while the tears burned away at the corners of his eyes they refused to escape.

He needed to get out of that dingy campus apartment - fuck, was it his? Essi's? Was Valdo with them? - or at least have someone talk some damn sense into him. He staggered back to the living room, called out the names of friends that might be with him blindly, too afraid of what he might see if he dared look. He could see in 1080p, the pixels, he'd counted them, though he thought he'd read otherwise, but who was he to argue with his own math.

"Look at it," a voice commanded somewhere, and he could just scarcely determine it was real and tangible and not a hallucination. "Don't you see it?" He tried to mouth the word no, but no sound came out. What was he even supposed to be looking at?

"Wanna watch something?" Another voice sneered.

"Mmm, that Netflix show? That fantasy one, witches or something?" Jaskier didn't want to watch TV, he wanted to breathe again. He slid back, head resting on what he aimlessly realized was the couch. He could call an ambulance, but his fingers felt too rubbery and boneless to pull his phone out of his pocket, let alone actually command it. Besides, he couldn't remember the number. It's fine. He just needs to close his eyes and focus on his breath and he'll be just fine.

Jaskier was not just fine. Jaskier was tripping fucking balls. He needed to get the fuck out of that apartment, out of his skin, out of his head. He's suffocating, drowning - wait, no. Shit. He's burning. His skin is bubbling and his lungs choke on thick black smoke and he's going to fucking die. He tears off his thrifted plaid flannel, claws at his sweaty gray tee but can't manage to get it over his head. Stripping wouldn't help him. He's on fire. He needed to leave. He needed to go to the hospital.

The hospital. It's a fucking college town. Oxenfurt's sprawling university hospital is looming and unmistakable. He'd been there before - the bike accident where he broke his arm, the bout of pneumonia where the doctor successfully convinced him to quit smoking (only lasted a few months, alas), the alcohol poisoning he dared not speak of. He could find it. Just had to escape. Left foot, right foot, that's it. He fumbles with the door handle, stumbles through and onto the sidewalk. It was dark out, but the street lamps were the sun, sulfurous yellow glimmering against fresh snow. The apartment behind him was ablaze, melting even; he could still feel it, and this renewed urgency propelled him forward.

He ran, or at least his calves felt like he was running, but time marched so slowly he couldn't discern one pace or another. The sky was so dark, black even, gaping and never-ending, but the lights of apartments and buildings and street lamps were blinding. There was a 7-Eleven, and then he needed to make a left. Or maybe a right? He needed to turn, and then keep pushing, and then he'd be at the hospital and he'd be okay. He could get his burns treated and hope the scars didn't render his hands stiff and immobile - he was a jazz trombone major, after all, and he needed those hands.

The 7-Eleven was in view. It had been in view for hours. He wasn't sure if he was close or far or on another plane of existence from it altogether. But it was there. Which meant he had to turn. Right was a dead-end. It had to be left. He just had to cross the street. He looked left, and then right, and vomited into the snow from the dizziness of it all for a moment before trying again. Right. Coast is clear. Just move.

There's a flash of light and a squeal of rubber on pavement, and Jaskier watched his pitiful life flash before his eyes. When he opened them, he wasn't in the street but on his side in the snow, and it felt beautiful and cold and practically holy against his skin. Had he been hit? Had he never even stepped off the curb? How long had he been there?

"Hey!" A voice cried, and he fought against his twitching muscles to roll over and face it. "You alright?" It was a man, tall and broad and built like a mountain, with silver hair pulled into a messy bun and amber eyes and a worried scowl.

"Fire," Jaskier managed to mumble, curling tighter into himself. "Am I dead?" Recognition seemed to shine in the stranger's eyes.

"What did you take?" He drew closer, crouched next to him, and Jaskier recoiled frantically. He held his hands out, fingers tightly curled and nails digging into his palm, batted at the man blindly.

"Mmm, no!" He gasped, shoulders heaving with the effort. "Fuck off."

"Look, man," the stranger dropped his voice, low and hushed and gravely. "I know you're tweaking. I've been there. Just tell me what you took so I can fucking help you." He reached a hand out, calloused and worn and firm, and rested it on Jaskier's shoulder. Jaskier jerked - the burns, he couldn't touch them, they'd get infected, it would hurt, he can't - fuck, wait. There are no burns. The stranger kept his grip on his shoulder, and he could just faintly make out the slightest hint of track marks peeking out from the cuff of the man's sleeve.

"Acid," he muttered finally, following it with a long, shaky exhale. There are no burns. His mind reeled over the memory of the tab, bright green and printed with the smiling face of Bernie Sanders before melting away on his tongue.

"What are you doing out here?" The gruff voice commandeered his attention.

"Hospital. Apartment was on fire." The snow ebbed and flowed beneath him, altogether more like a boat on the ocean than a snowbank in the middle of Oxenfurt University.

"Right. I'll take you there." The man wasted no time waiting for a response from Jaskier, simply snaked his arms around him and yanked him up. Jaskier struggled against his grip as he carried him to his awaiting car, overcome by the scent of cedarwood from the man's deodorant. "Chill out." The movement stopped finally, and Jaskier felt altogether too hot and freezing cold all at once.

"Feel sick," he managed to grit out past a clenched jaw. The man managed to ease him back to the ground in time for him to heave unproductively for a few more moments.

"Name's Geralt, by the way," the voice rumbled, vibrating in Jaskier's chest as he was once again hoisted up and then deposited into the back seat of an unfamiliar car.

"Jaskier." Focusing on what the man - Geralt - was saying was too much effort. He let his head loll to the side, idly watching the lights streak past his window in a burst of fluorescent color before disappearing into the dark.

Geralt knew a tweaker when he saw one. While he'd never touched the shit in his nearly two years of addiction, he knew plenty of meth-heads adjacently. So when he spotted a young man trembling on the side of the road, brown hair and Oxenfurt t-shirt clinging to his skin with sweat even in the cold late-November night, he could guess what was going on. He didn't want to stop, he really didn't. He was four months clean, just coming off a late night security gig, and those people were bad news. He knows; he was one of them. But the kid - and he really did look like just a kid, probably not even 21 yet - didn't look ravenous and mad. He looked scared and sick and alone. So Geralt stopped.

The kid's pupils were blown to hell and back, confirming his suspicions when he got close enough to really get a good look. His cheeks were flushed a stark pink against pale skin and red-rimmed and dark-circled eyes. The kid was combative, but not as much as he would've expected, and he could feel him relax when his eyes ghosted over the track marks on his forearm. If the kid wanted to view them as kindred spirits, as cut from the same cloth, so be it if it calmed him down.

Acid. Huh. So he was a little off base. Leave it to the ex-junkie to leap to conclusions. But acid, meth, molly, it didn't matter. Either way, the kid was shaking like a leaf and strung out of his mind and Geralt reverted back autopilot from years of crashing on bathroom floors and dirty backyards.

Jaskier hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep until he woke to find himself being jostled, carried, and blinded by bright, buzzing fluorescent lights. He struggled for a moment until the arms carrying him tightened their grip and a disembodied voice hummed his name, and memory came flooding back. The acid, the trip, the fire, the stranger. Geralt.

"Geralt?" He mumbled sleepily into the man's chest. "Where?" He gave up trying to manage the full sentence, chose instead to hope he was understood nonetheless.

"ER. You're safe." Jaskier did not feel particularly safe, but he was too exhausted to do much about that, so he just let himself remain limp and pliant in Geralt's arms. Geralt and other out-of-sight strangers talked around him, but he couldn't follow the conversation, couldn't track them as he was moved about. Before long he was deposited into a bed, heard the scrape of metal and rustle of fabric as the curtain was tugged closed, and finally blinked his eyes open at the introduction of a doctor hovering over him.

"I'm Dr Chireadan." A mouthful of a name Jaskier realized he was far too tongue-tied to pronounce. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Jaskier." He scrubbed a hand across his eyes, choosing to ignore the mottled bruises and scrapes where his fingernails had dug into his palms. "Jaskier Pankratz."

"Alright, and can you tell me what's going on?" Could he? Just the thought of recounting the events that led him to that moment sent panic drumming in his chest.

"Did some acid with friends," he explained shakily. "Thought the… thought the apartment was on fire, thought I was burning." The doctor nodded and hummed in acknowledgement. Geralt longued in a chair pushed against the wall, phone in his hand but not looking at it.

"How are you feeling now?"

"Now? Like I got hit by a campus bus," he quipped, enjoying the raised eyebrow it elicited from his new companion.

"Well, that's not terribly surprising. Your temperature is a little elevated, but your heart rate is coming down nicely, so we're just fighting dehydration at this point." Jaskier bobbed his head as if he was really particularly processing his statement. "A nurse is going to swing by, take some blood so we can make sure nothing else was mixed in there, and then get you on some IV saline. That'll have you feeling much better."

"Sounds good." Jaskier was sleepy, unsure of what time it was at this point, and still distinctly disoriented. The doctor moved back towards the curtain, swung it open but stopped with one foot still in the room.

"One of our social workers will be down to talk to you," he added. "Psych evaluation. It's mandatory." Then he turned his gaze to Geralt, gave him a nod of acknowledgement, and with that he was gone. Jaskier wasted no time before flopping to his side, curling up, and falling asleep.

He was roused again by a nurse gently tugging his arm free from where he had it wrapped tight around his middle. She was chatting idly with Geralt, and there seemed to be some level of familiarity between the two.

"There you are, honey," the nurse remarked, fiddling with syringes and vials and whatever else was laid out on the little steel tray. "Deep breath for me?" He obliged. "Alright, and a quick pinch." The needle disappeared into the soft skin on the inside of the crook of his arm, and he watched the blood flow out of his body in a trance. "How are you feeling? Stomach bothering you?" She nodded at the hand still clutching at his abdomen.

"A little," he admitted, diverting his gaze, counting ceiling tiles. "Just tired."

"All done," she announced as she withdrew the last vial, hooking up the tubes that dangled from the floppy bag of clear liquid he could reasonably reckon was the saline. He returned to the fetal position, tucked his chin to his sternum. "Here. In case you need to be sick." He cracked an eye open, took note of cardboard basin now resting on the bed beside him, and offered little by way of acknowledgement.

"Thanks." Someone tugged the blanket up to cover him, and he didn't terribly care whether it was Geralt or the nurse. The pair, seemingly under the impression that Jaskier was asleep, resumed their conversation.

"What are you doing, Geralt? You're supposed to be staying out of trouble."

"Trouble found me." Jaskier suddenly felt impressively guilty. What a fuck-up he was, dragging a total stranger into his stupid mistakes. "I couldn't just leave him there. You understand."

"You have to be careful," the nurse scolded him. Jaskier felt like a lame dog, the kind that most drive past, until eventually someone bothered to sweep him up, drop him at the vet's, and then go on with their life. Should've just put me down, the darker recess of his mind supplied, and he pushed away the thought as quickly as it had cropped up. "You can't jeopardize your recovery."

"I'm not," Geralt argued back. She tutted, and Jaskier could hear the sweep of the curtain again. He drifted back to sleep.

The hospital was on fire. He could taste the smoke and tears and copper tang of fear. He bolted upright in his bed, but - for fuck's sake - he was restrained. They thought he was crazy, bound his wrists and ankles in leather shackles. He jerked and pulled, thrashed about in the bed, kicked and screamed. Anything. He had to escape. He couldn't do this again. He had to get free. He had to--

"Jaskier!" That voice. He fought to find it, locked eyes with Geralt, and clawed his way back into reality. The hospital was not on fire. He was not restrained. Angry red scratch marks streaked up his wrists. "Breathe with me." Jaskier exhaled in a rush of stale air, a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding, and rooted around blindly until he found Geralt's hands and clasped on. "Good. In four, out four." In four, out four. He could do that, it was no more than the breathing exercises he used to practice every day back when he marched drum corps.

"Sorry," he choked once his breath had finally settled. He did not let go of Geralt's hands. "Nightmare."

"I know. Just take it easy." Finally, Geralt managed to worm his hands free of Jaskier's white-knuckle grasp, settled back into his dutiful bedside vigil while Jaskier dropped back to sleep.

The hours (were they hours? Time was still weird) passed in a dizzying barrage of dreams and nightmares punctuated by occasional bursts of lucidity. He overheard the nurses, the doctors - it sounded like Geralt was popular amongst the hospital staff. There was a phone call, an even deeper voice presumably belonging to Geralt's father on the other line, reminding him that he was supposed to stop messing with Jaskier's "kind".

The psychiatric evaluation was the worst of it, however brief if might've been. For whatever godforsaken reason he demanded Geralt stay, then limped through an explanation of his exhausted psyche in front of the virtual stranger. The very nice, very attractive stranger. (Shut the fuck up, Jask. Keep it together.) Yes, he had borderline. Yes, here's the self-inflicted cigarette burns welted into the flesh of his upper arm. Yes, he drank, but he was 22 (Geralt made a surprised noise at this revelation) and well within his right to. Yes, he dabbled with drugs, but why not when you're too numb most of the time to fret about the consequences?

Eventually, finally, he was discharged. He still felt foggy and altogether not great, and he'd have to remember to email his professors and let them know he was taking a sick day before he went back to bed. It was morning light when Geralt helped him back to his car, a beat-up old Corolla probably as old as Jaskier himself. When they finally made it to Jaskier's apartment, Geralt fished around for a pen and scribbled his number onto the little Narcotics Anonymous meeting card the social worker had slipped him. Jaskier uttered his thanks, smiled fondly, and disappeared.

It was two weeks later when he found himself in a meeting, awkward and lingering in the back of the room, clad in his Conservatory of Music hoodie and black skinnies, cast in orange by the low light. Eventually someone managed to talk him into speaking, and though he young and naive and stupid he agreed. His mom always said he had a way with words, after all.

"I'm not addicted to acid," he began tentatively. "Or any other one drug, for that matter. I'm addicted to escaping. Even a bad trip is better than facing reality." He raked an unsteady hand back through his hair. "It doesn't matter the drug, I'll take it. Since I started smoking at fourteen, self-medicating a disorder I wouldn't even be diagnosed with until eighteen." He scanned the crowd of attendees, understood wordlessly he was in the company of addicts who probably had it far worse than he could ever know, who probably found his struggles trivial and petty. And yet, there was nothing but quiet understanding and empathy on their faces. "But now I can't get through a weekend sober. Can't write for my composition classes without getting high first." His gaze settled on Geralt, tucked in the corner, eyebrows knitted in sympathy. "So I'm not really too sure how I'm supposed to get clean when the problem isn't some drug, but my personality, who I am." He sucked in a deep breath, flashed the slightest smile at Geralt. "But I have to do something."

He left as soon as he'd finished speaking, still reeling from the vulnerability of it, denim trucker tugged tight against the winter chill. A hand caught his wrist, and god, could he recognize those rough fingers anywhere.

"Jaskier." It was Geralt, just a step or two behind him. "Do you want to get coffee?" Jaskier's shoulders relaxed; at least he hadn't offered to get drinks.

"Yeah. I'd like that." He busied himself with fixing his jacket and hair, falling into step beside Geralt. He couldn't help but smile. So much for staying out of trouble.

#drugs tw #the witcher #the witcher netflix #the witcher modern au #the witcher fanfic #geralt #geralt of rivia #jaskier #dandelion #julian alfred pankratz #prompt fill #fanfic #ao3 #henry cavill #joey batey

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yeonchi · 3 years

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Sea Princesses Book Review X1: Educational Books

Raws downloaded 2 July 2021 Screencaps extracted 3 July 2021 Transcription completed 4 July 2021 Translation completed 8 July 2021

Scans, transcripts and translations available on Google Drive

This ride never ends. When will it end?

Bonne Lecture, everyone. Last year I bought, translated and reviewed the Sea Princesses main and literacy series books as a lockdown project. Back then, I said that the educational or bathtime books would not be included within the scope of my translations, but what I meant to say was that I wouldn’t purposefully shell out more of my own money to buy those books so I could translate them. I am open to translating other media, but only if someone sends me the raws or I find them online. There is also a comic series published by Editora On Line, but from the looks of the covers, they are mostly adaptations of episodes from the first season of the animated series, which makes it even more pointless for me to even make the effort to buy (or even translate) them.

Even though Fabio Yabu’s name is on the books, there is a chance that he is only created as the creator and illustrator of Sea Princesses and that the books were actually ghostwritten. The main reason why I say this is because Yabu never mentioned those books on the Princesas do Mar website when it was still up. As such, I consider such spinoff media to be non-canonical to the series because they are not official stories, but I will still judge them as if they were in order to see whether the publishers got things right or wrong.

These educational books were released by Ciranda Cultural (presumably around 2010) as a set that also includes some stickers and a CD, or is it a DVD? Yeah, apparently according to the disc, it has different content when you put it into a CD or DVD player, provided that it doesn’t confuse the DVD player (because this has happened when people tried to make CD-DVD hybrids). What’s on the disc is a mystery, but if anyone is able to rip the content from that disc, feel free to upload it somewhere (like archive.org) and shoot me a message so I can take a look at it.

For some reason, people think it’s weird for adults to mention children they don’t know personally, but regardless, I would like to acknowledge Lorena Landia, Ana Paula and Lendo Histórias because if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have been able to extract the screencaps (and auto-transcribed subtitles) that made the raws for these books. However, some of the videos aren’t in very good quality because they don’t show the pages to the camera for long enough for me to get a decent screenshot or the lighting is bad or they’ll have one video in 1080p and another in 360p. I’m not going to put blame on Lorena Landia (who actually read all eight books on camera) for not being consistent in video quality, however I would appreciate proper scans of the books if anyone out there is able to provide them.

Each book is 8 pages long and mostly consists of introductions about various marine animals relating to some of the princesses featured in the series, obviously including the main three, namely Polvina, Ester and Tubarina. Some of the books also mention their parents as well; we get to properly see the Stingray King and Queen, who were reduced to background characters in the animated series (and got less screentime or prominent shots than Jaune, Goldina and Flourison combined), and the Turtle King and Queen, who had a little more prominence. The Octopus King and Queen are also mentioned and that’s essentially all that we see of the parents in these books - we don’t even get to see the Whale King and Queen even though they were featured in the animated series.

Marcello is featured in the book on sharks while unsurprisingly, Marcela is not even mentioned. For some reason, Hugo isn’t mentioned in the book on turtles given that he and Tata are supposed to be twins, but I’m not that surprised either because the animated series never acknowledged it or even stated that he was the Turtle Prince (they just implied it and they didn’t even put a lot of effort into that). Surprisingly, the book on stingrays states that Soraia is Tubarina’s cousin - um, excuse me wtf? OK, I know The Legendary Fish revealed that Tubarina and Soraia were related because shark-rays exist (and stingrays are indeed related to sharks), but I’d call them distantly-related at best, not cousins. Marcello, the Hammerhead Shark Prince, is Tubarina’s canonical cousin and he’s probably more related to Tubarina than Soraia.

One final thing; the book on stingrays mentions an aquarium like the one in Guaruja, Sao Paulo. This is referring to Acqua Mundo (Aqua World), which is a 90 minute drive from Sao Paulo (same duration to Santos), but about an hour’s drive from Santos because you either have to cross the Santos Estuary (which takes about 20 minutes and costs around USD$2.30 each way) or go around via Cubatao. For relevance, here is an old photo of someone posing with a Princesas do Mar sign in front of the entrance to Acqua Mundo circa the early 2010′s (tweet credit here).

In conclusion, the educational books are just as I expected; 8-page-long books that are merely worthy of being take-home reader books for a Prep student’s reading homework - you take a book home each night, you read it to your parents, then they sign it off to say that you read the book before you take it back the next day and repeat the process. There’s not a lot of substance in them, but most of it is best left to the sticker albums, without which I wouldn’t have bothered to review the educational books in the first place. Stay tuned for my review of the sticker albums.

#sea princesses #princesas do mar #princesas del mar #el reino de acuatica #sea princesses book review

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entamesubs · 3 years

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Regarding Past Mistakes & the BD Release

Hello everyone, entame here.

As I get closer and closer to beginning the sub process for episodes 1-13 of SEVENS using its Blu-Ray, I do want to address some issues regarding my subs that have been brought up either directly to me, or anonymously across other sites.

Before I begin, I want to note that this concerns most of my earlier subs, which is why I thought to make this post with the BD releases on the horizon.

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As of writing this, this “sub group” consists of two people (and is in the process of adding a third, mostly to help with timing)—the person writing this post (”entame”), and Yona, the proofreader. When I first began subbing SEVENS (specifically for episodes 12 and 13), it was a one-person job. This means I did translations, proofreading, and timing by myself (to some extent, I still do all three of these jobs, but not as much as I used to). Yona did not join until around 13-14.

I realize that I have made a lot of mistakes over the course of this subbing career, but especially concerning the beginning episodes, which were the finale of the first arc, and therefore very important in the grand scheme of things.

I want to deeply apologize for them, and address what happened and what’s going to change about them (and possibly future subs) going forward.

Episode 12 in particular was rife with some mistranslation errors. The most “obvious” was concerning the first release of the episode where the context of Roa’s rule-sharking was different than it is now (I don’t quite remember it exactly, so this is why it’s vague). Obviously, a lot of this was corrected in the second release of the episode, and the first version isn’t a thing that exists anymore, even on my own hard drive. It is somewhat fortunate that it also doesn’t exist on anime mirror sites either, as the first group to get a sub out was SevensRoadSubs, so it is their version of episode 12 that exists on most streaming sites.

Likewise, episode 13 suffered these mistakes as well. One example is translating the tournament that Otis was disqualified at as “the 60th” instead of the “the 666th”, which is the correct one. Stuff like this slipped past my notice, so please accept my apologies.

However, the framing of 12 and 13 also laid the groundwork for how certain things would be subbed in future episodes. This means mistakes would endure, such as Roa saying “Distortion Power Code” or the phrasing of his summoning chant in the subs of 13 and 18, despite the fact that it should be “Distortion Power Chord” (as I learned later on). Some of you will also remember the notice I made regarding the decision to use YGOrganization’s translations of cards (where available) post-episode 15, for the sake of consistency across fandom.

Doing subs for SEVENS every week has been a very great joy to me, and something I don’t regret doing. That said, I also know I have made a lot of mistakes, earning some ire. I have learned a lot in the past 3 months since I started. I have never done large-scale translation work or fansubbing before this, so a lot of it has been growing pains. I intended to use the translation of SEVENS as a stepping stone to improving my Japanese (which it has!), but I am not perfect, and always open to corrections.

I say this on every sub release post and also at the end of every episode—I am always, always, always open to corrections. I will make mistakes, and though I try my best to notice them, sometimes I may not. Sometimes, as in the case of “Distortion Power Chord”, I will not even notice them until weeks down the line, when it is too late to change them.

That is why I always try to release 1080p versions where available—because they correct mistakes in the first 720p batch, which are speedsubs.

Still, I think it’s important to acknowledge the mistakes I’ve made for the sake of transparency and to let the fandom know of wrong information I inadvertently circulated.

The upcoming BD releases of episodes 1-13 will go through a much more rigorous subbing process than my usual weekly episodes. For that reason, it may be a rather slow process of working on them, as I plan to have multiple eyes comb through the episodes before release. The BD release will not have a re-release, nor will it be possible to correct potential mistakes after release, so it needs to be the best version I can confidently put out.

I say this because episodes 12 and 13 in particular were extremely rough in terms of translation, as it was my first foray into fansubbing. This means the existing scripts for them may be completely re-translated or re-worked in the BD release, leading to some inconsistencies of future episode’s subs (particularly those past episode 14). If I can ever get the 2nd Blu-Ray set, these will also, of course, be addressed there.

For full transparency, and going forward, there will be some changes to how certain things are phrased, worded, or translated.

YGOrg will always take priority in terms of card name translations. Previously, I played a little loose with my own interpretations and having some fun with puns, but going forward this is now a hard rule. If they translate a card name a certain way, I will use their translation for the sake of consistency. This means no more instances of things like “Kill-Lure Bait Ball” or “Washbuckler” (though they were fun, it became confusing).

BD-specific: I will also try to match information with stuff on Yugipedia. This is BD-specific because weekly speedsubs may come out faster than info on Yugipedia, so there will always be some inconsistency there. However, for the BD, things like “Beastgear World - Trike Fox” will become “Trike Fox of the Beast Gear World”, and other such changes.

Also BD-specific: 2 subtitle tracks! One will use official spellings of names, like Ohdo Yuga, while the other will use transliterations, like Oudou Yuuga (as I usually do). On Luke/Rook - not sure what to do yet. I don’t want to make 3-4 different tracks for official and transliteration, each with Luke/Rook options. Both tracks may use Luke just for my sanity. No change for weekly releases, however; those will always use transliterations.

Weekly episode titles will always follow DMC’s translations of the summaries beforehand. This was also a loose rule before as I always tried to do this unless I wanted to have some fun with puns or references. This will now become a hard rule.

Regarding BD release timelines, while I don’t have a “date-by-date” planned out, I do expect to be done by the second or third week of December. This may change or be delayed, but I will always announce here ahead of time. The second BD comes out in January, so I want to be sure to finish before then, as January and February tend to be busier months for me (fun fact: despite living in the US, neither my family or I celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas, so these two months are prime time for getting things done).

Thank you to everyone who has supported me so far! Please know I would never have gotten to this point without your support, and am always deeply humbled by the positive response. The BD release would never have happened without you, as it was crowdfunded by you. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

When I first started subbing, I thought I would be a second subber alongside another group, so I could never imagine having come to this point now. This is why I chose to make this post addressing my mistakes and future changes, for the sake of clarity.

Before I close off this (extremely long) post, I do want to give a shoutout to Yona! There would be a lot more mistakes without her. While I control the blog, the name, and the posting process, she has been indispensable with her work and I don’t want to leave her out. This sub group went from one to two, and I am extremely grateful for the help.

Thank you for reading to this point. Hopefully this clears a lot of things up going forward! As always, my submit and ask box are both always open for questions, comments, or corrections. Please never be shy to correct me on anything—I welcome another set of eyes!

#announcements #oh this came out longer than i expected

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maleksrami · 4 years

Photo

ORIGINAL → EDITED gif making process tag

I wasn’t sure if this was something anyone wanted to see from me specifically, but I’ve been tagged by @cuddlerlouis @ltwalls2020 and @finewalls to do it so!!! okay sure!!!

LEFT: animated, cropped, resized from a 1080p video RIGHT: sharpened, colored, text added (optional)

Listen...I’ve been making gifs since the dawn of time. I think I first taught myself how to gif when I was 11 with Windows Movie Maker and a program called Paint Shop Pro 9 and the only social media that existed were fandom message boards. I’d have to manually screenshot the video frame by frame. Nowadays, (and for the last decade on tumblr) I’ve used KMPlayer to screencap and Photoshop CS3 to make the gifs because the “load files into stack” extension doesn’t work in my version of CS5 and that’s how I like to do it lol. My entire experience of making gifs on this site is still documented on my blog, and you can absolutely see how I’ve improved over the years and discovered my own style and stuck with it. But I am STILL constantly learning and adapting!!! so it’s quite fun. anyways, onward.

I load the screencap files into a stack. Then, I use an action I made myself of my basic giffing steps to speed up the process once my files are imported—make frames from layers, reverse frames, flatten frames into layers, set time delay to 0.04. Time delay is a personal preference but I like smooth gifs, especially when I have a lot of frames. I run this action before I crop so I can see exactly where my subject moves around and compare where they are in the first frame vs. the last frame, so I don’t accidentally cut them off somewhere when I crop. Once it’s cropped how I want, I run a sharpening action.

Then I color it from scratch! I used to be big on finding PSDs and altering them to fit the look I was going for, but I find that doing it yourself layer by layer is how you really learn about coloring. I specifically chose clips for this that were gonna need more editing than your average gif that is already well lit with a decent white balance (rip to every person who has ever filmed Harry and Louis but I’m different) so you can see the difference and how I work around inconsistent lighting or unstable concert footage with ever-changing colors and shadows. I usually go in the same order:

curves - (I only JUST recently discovered what the eyedroppers in this tool can do for a gif’s white balance, so....*clown music*....glad I know that now) and do a minor adjustment to lighten the gif a tiny bit.

levels - to further crisp up the black and white points and brighten

brightness/contrast - ya know

selective color - I bump up the black in every gif to avoid any noise and this also helps lower the gif size by the time I save. it helps make a gif pop a little more and gives it some good contrast. Then I’ll fuss a bit with the red and yellows and take out any unwanted tones I don’t want like the blues/cyans in the background or the yellows in the original color grading (why the FUCK is the Lights Up video this way). BUT! This is not always necessary and there are times where it should be avoided. I included a gif of Rami here because I notice a lot of gif makers go ham on the selective coloring and brightening, that he’ll look pretty whitewashed in their final gifs because they take out a lot of reds/yellows and his skin loses color. so it’s important to pay attention to your subject’s skin tone especially if you’re giffing a POC, pay attention that your editing doesn’t wash their gorgeous skin out ok!!!! you can brighten a gif without brightening their whole being!!! moving on!!!!

color balance - this is a fun layer to play with and a very crucial step to how my final gif looks in terms of color. I gave the Lights Up video a reddish tone with this, but you could also go with more blue-ish look here too.

text/captioning - I have my font settings saved as a PSD file so I just pull that up and drag and drop the text, and edit the layer to whatever my caption is. I’ve been using the same font settings for YEARS and I think that is one of the main things that differentiate your gifs from others is having your own style of captioning. It’s fun to experiment with this!

I might add a couple more brightness layers or a black and white gradient map set to soft light at a very low opacity!!! or play with the exposure tool!!! it depends on what I’m working on, but those are my basic steps!!!!! then I save them set to Pattern or Adaptive (whichever looks better) and that’s pretty much it :) i’m happy to answer any questions or help if you’re starting out!!!

Idk who else has done this yet but I’m gonna tag some of my favorite gif makers in other fandoms to spread the love @summercohen @joewright @barrysberkman annnd @s-k-y-w-a-l-k-e-r but no worries if you don’t wanna share all your tips and secrets, fam. We totally get it xx

#...very sorry about how long this is #this is why!!!! gif makers get frustrated about stolen gifs or lack of notes...it's a lot of work

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incarnateirony · 4 years

Note

Without maybe putting too fine a point on it, based on your observation of the way the show is headed, do you think we're moving to an ending that separates all of TFW from each other? I know the diverging of Sam and Dean's paths is a big part of their journeys, but do you think that applies to Cas (and even Jack), too? I think of all of them, I'm least clear on what the rest of Cas's journey looks like from here (beyond the Empty-that's pretty clear).

If you watch nothing else of my videos, I suggest taking the time to watch Galactic Grudge and Destiny’s Reflection. It takes about 20 minutes total, requires headphones and 1080P and yes, I understand people with audio processing hurdles or language barriers might struggle a bit but long term it maps out a path that would take several hundred pages or more to map out in text.

That disclaimer out of the way as to why I’ve arrived at this destination:

Yes.

Not entirely, nor permanently. Death is nothing to fear. Once they stop fearing death, and especially once they break the system so people aren’t auto-sorted into cages of passivity without their People and Families -- once All of the Heavens function on grand scale like, say, Ash’s bar did -- once humanity has reclaimed the throne/garden. What IS there to fear? That’s the real question.

With the video TLDR spec minded, my hot take:

Whether before or after Cas gets yeeted to the Empty (probably after), he’s due to mirror Rowena’s unbirthing of hell for a long, long list of reasons. Which sure, is her final death. But it wasn’t her end, was it?

But it’s Castiel most definitely arranging a home in which the Winchesters can have peace.

While I see Sam being the one to throw open all the doors of heaven as Chuck did hell and lead a giant MOL resistance through it to TAKE back the throne (another reason I think Cas won’t be until after the Empty, because taking heaven back is one thing but actually stabilizing it in all the omens of what happens if God disappears or w/e is another -- we’re talking 15.20 here) (also a note, berens wrote 12.22 as a two parter alongside Dabb for 23, and Dabb also wrote Inside Man where the Bobbies revolt), Cas is probably the one going to end up with that throne. Very loosely.

Because they can’t just throw it to their kid and put the weight of the world on his shoulders, it doesn’t break anything. And Rowena has gone from Cas foil to Cas mirror over the years, and even as far as, say, The Things We Left Behind -- much less later Funeralia when she actually MEANT IT, or anything else to follow -- it’s about regret over a child that our stupid battles pretty much condemned. Sam and Dean also have a foot in this story pond but it most centrally belongs to Cas.

So while Cas chases the path of the goddess (Mary, Rowena, Amara), and Sam subverts the allfather he was tied to this season (John, Chuck and yes, even histories of Dean himself), where is Dean? Well one, Dean’s always been tied to someone fans aren’t asking enough questions about right now: Death. Who is very, very prominent this year, and I think everyone has to go rewatch Two Minutes To Midnight right now, too. Focus on more than the pizza or even “one day I’ll reap god, too”. Just focus on it all. Hell, focus on the inversion of Death finding them inconsequential to them being important. Focus on it all.

Dean has emotionally lensed parts of Chuck’s pillar this season, but that’s not really HIS, that’s what Sam was directly tied to. Dealing with daddy issues has always been a Dean thing, and part of his residual anger and hurt are what drove him and Cas apart this year, so the Chuckmara mirroring he kinda filled that emotional slot, sure. But his mytharc positioning, I’m gonna need everybody to think about that.

Dabb has spent like, 2 years teaching people that it’s fine to let go in a mature way and process your grief. Both Sam and Jack got passed a philosopher’s stone in order from Dean to Cas to (cursed aeonchild), once in 15.09 and once in 15.13. The magenta light of death is on both Dean and Cas, but largely avoids Sam, and Jack after his rebirth, while they stand over the christchild in place of Joseph and Mary.

Be it Swan Song “I can’t keep treating you like a kid anymore; you’re a grown--well, overgrown--man”, to modern “But now... you are a grown man, and I am incredibly proud of you”; it’s recognition of the child as a man. Be it Dean’s 12.22 “I saw you. Back there. You’re ready for this.” -- be it John’s “What next?” while moving on. Be it “go, mom, be happy.” be it even when she died, and they thought of bringing her back, “I saw your mother’s heaven. And she is. Happy. She’s... with John. And there’s no hurt, there’s no pain, guilt. Just joy.”

Sam’s place is on earth. His chance to have a home. A family. Dean... Dean has a family. And sure, Sam does as part of that family. But to even be a head of a home. To HAVE a wife. And a son. To finish leaving behind his legacy. Dean... has his I’m sorry.

So let’s play a game, presuming relinquishing the angel’s hold on heaven is done. Saving Cas from the empty is done. But Cas is sitting on that heaven throne while they all look different ways on what to do. Sure, Jack could revive Sam and Dean and bring them back to earth even if Cas is stuck glued to heaven like Rowena is hell. But if Dean’s done his duty AND is proud of his brother beyond duty, if the monsters are all but taken care of short of some stragglers Sam’s legacy system with Eileen can clean up. And ultimately... someone still needs to raise Jack, yes-- what does that give us?

I saw you. You’re ready for this. Now, you’re a grown-- overgrown-- man. I can’t treat you like a kid anymore.

It’s okay, dadmom. You fought for me, raised me, loved me. That’s enough. Go. Be happy. I’ve got him.

So back to “Dabb’s Dark Side of the Moon, Ash bar, megascale”, well. I’m gonna say. They’re gonna need a good hand on deck for that dream to let people find their people, to find their heaven, hell, to decide if they haven’t found their people yet and go back and try again.

It’s not goodbye, it’s I’ll See You Later. Because there’s still parts of earth they can make better. Every day they can make it better. And once Sam has his life, full, he can and would rejoin them all, in heaven. Be that wayfarer bars or toes in the sand, a world where people, families--they’re just as real there as they are on earth, able to make their perfect worlds. Dean and yes, Cas, can go and make that world even ahead of Sam-- with John, and Mary, and whatever old friends they choose to see again. And Sam, and Jack -- and Eileen -- can live on earth. Because for years Dean has wanted Sam to have a life. And die old of something normal and have a kids and grandkids. Trial and Error (Dabb), anyone.

The issue is letting go without it either being suicidal ideation of destructive sacrifice. And I think that’s the framework we’re going to be delivered.

Could I be wrong, sure I guess, I’m human. But as of right now, that’s what I see.

Cas has always wanted to bring his People home. But who have his People become? While yes, being seated in that chair gives chance to make things right with a few remaining angels he would no doubt give a chance, humans reclaiming the garden and planet from the divine they surrendered it to (Hammer of the Gods, Dabb, if you read between the lines on the Billions of pagan gods), or reversing various sealings (Clip Show, Dabb, if you pay attention to how and why EACH WORLD WAS MADE TO BEGIN WITH and how many Falls there have been and WHY THE TABLETS EXIST TO BEGIN WITH), whatever. It wouldn’t really be about establishing authority--and in the end, I’m fairly certain the Castiel seated in that throne would be irrevocably human. Because it’s the human soul that’s immortal. Be it using his grace to establish a spell and reversing elements like in Sacrifice, or tied into the angel blood and human heart theme that’s screaming at us this year-- that’s pretty much where I see Cas ending up.

So Dean and Cas separate off to heaven in one way, Sam and Jack another, but still fated to come back together. Sam will have Eileen waiting for him. And Jack to raise.

Because the point is that they were here at all and you got to know them. And when they’re gone, it WILL hurt. But that hurt will be a reminder of how much you love them. But learning to let go -- it’s a part of growing up.

I’ve seen you. You’re ready for this. I can’t keep treating you like a kid anymore. You’re a grown, overgrown, man, and I am incredibly proud of you.

Go, be happy.

“See you on the other side.”

If people can’t watch my vids and pull anything out of it, my second note is to go do a Dabberens rewatch. Pull up Dabb and Berens eps on superwiki, make yourself a chain. I WILL note most of 6 and 7 has been seemingly obsoleted by Dabb, which should surprise none of us with all the ball punches at season 7 he does, so if you wanna save yourself a few hours, feel free to bypass. Season 10 also seems to have been addressed in season 14, and everything after that is the onset of Dabb era, so once you get to season 11 (where Carver and Dabb were sharing) and/or 12 (where Dabb took over entirely), just do a straight run. I also won’t blame you for bypassing Bloodlines.

But if you do truncate 6/7, and a few eps, I suggest replacing them with the finale of each season (4-14, 6 and 7 pretty much already addressed last year), because Dabb still heavily employs those whether they were his own or not. Before Carver came back Dabb was sitting in the upcoming showrunner slot even during Gamble era. Dude has been primed and paying attention for a long fucking time. Absolutely 0% of people should have been surprised at Dabb inheriting the show when he did. And he’s been telegraphing his ideas for this show for years. Notice how many eps I cited above have Dabb’s pen all over it.

It’s where my headspace already was but damn if it doesn’t put Dabb and Dabberens’ direction in scale.

So for all my talk of philosopher’s stone and Death and all of that, if you can’t bring yourself to wade through all 20 minutes of Grudge-Reflection, I ask you to at least think on symbolism here

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dovechim · 5 years

Text

the singularity theory 03 (m)

➾ 11.5k yoongi x reader ft taehyung

➾ the singularity theory posits that privilege of anonymity, combined with the element of restricted physical contact, has the ability to foster an emotional intimacy between two strangers that is genuine and non-forced.

➾ summary: in your last year of undergrad, you find out what a gloryhole is at the expense of your final year thesis. it’s a classic example of a psychology experiment that went way, way wrong.

but how were you to know that a certain min yoongi would be sticking his dick into your life?

➾ warnings: gloryhole use, degradation, blowjob, impreg kink, mentions of cumplay

➾ a/n: happy new years!! after what feels like a million years, it’s finally here. i struggled a lot while writing this, and i am so so so relieved to finally wrap it up. thank you for waiting so patiently, and i hope you enjoy!! love, addie

01 | 02 | 03 (complete)

Literature Review

This project was named after the astronomical phenomenon of a gravitational singularity, a one-dimensional point in the centre of a black hole that contains an infinitely huge mass in an infinitely small space. Here, gravity and density become infinite, and space time curves indefinitely. It is also commonly referred to the point where all laws of physics cease to operate. When an object falls into a black hole and approaches the singularity, it is presumed to disappear completely and irrevocably. However, from an observer’s point of view, the object appears to merely approach the black hole with an ever decreasing speed, never actually disappearing inside.

The author believes that there are significant similarities between this astrological theory and the experiment. The conditions of anonymity and restricted physical contact seek to mimic the attractive forces of the black hole’s irresistible gravitational pull that ultimately culminates in a single point of no return; a point where the forces that govern typical societal interactions break down and cease to exist entirely. It is also the author’s belief that anonymity acts as a vacuum space where private information can be disclosed without fear of shame or judgement.

There is a dick in front of you. It is Mr Cheetos’s dick.

Strangely enough, it doesn’t look as much like a Cheeto as you remembered. His voice sounds far away, as if you’re hearing it underwater, and a kind of fascination grips you as you reach your hand out to touch it. Ignoring your notes on the table and switching off the voice recorder.

The dick that presents itself through the gloryhole in front of you is dripping with precum, and before it can hit the floor, you curiously stretch out your tongue to catch one of the drops. It is salty on your tongue, not altogether bad. You bring your tongue closer to the tip, and as if he can feel your breath on him, Mr Cheetos shoves his dick further into the gloryhole, and you can feel your core ache when you imagine how he must look like on the other side; balls pressed against the wall in desperation, straining to get every inch of his length through the hole for you.

You let your tongue lap at the tip; the man on the other side rewards you with a guttural groan. He is hot and silky on your tongue, and you circle it around him a few times before letting it come to rest just below his tip, curling your tongue around him as he leaks more precum onto your tastebuds.

Mr Cheetos thrusts once, a futile gesture because he is already at his limit, thighs pressed against the wall. You control how deep he goes, and the realisation of it thrills you when you slide your tongue forward just a tad, and he groans. Closing your mouth around him, you placate him with a few sucks, swallowing down the taste of him.

“Stop,” he chokes out suddenly. He withdraws his cock slightly from the hole, as if he is gripping his base on the other side. “Gonna make me cum.”

The room is hazy, all you can see is the hard cock in front of you, and you inch forward on your knees to coax him back into your mouth. “Then cum. On my face.”

A choked whisper on the other side, followed by a few curses. It sounds like Yoongi is struggling to keep his composure- wait, did you just say Yoongi? Your addled brain backtracks a few steps only to find your memory completely hazy. This is Mr Cheetos, you remind yourself. Mr Cheetos needs a servicing before you can proceed with the experiment, and Yoongi-

“Want your pussy, please,” the voice comes again, begging, pleading. “Turn around and slide yourself on my cock. Please.”

His cock is dripping again. A random thought crosses your mind; you can’t let the floor be stained with anything, or else people are going to find out about this. You get to your feet slowly, eyes trained on his cock and that drop of precum that is dangerously about to fall, hiking your skirt up, and-

The wet, blunt head of his cock brushes your folds, and you feel him drip down your inner thigh. Smiling to yourself in triumph, you spread your thighs and take him in your hand, rubbing your clit a few times before you guide him back to where he needs to be; to where he belongs. He sinks inside of you deep when you push back onto the gloryhole, and this time you swear as if you can feel the rumble of his chest through the thin wall when he moans.

Your ass is flush against the wall as he begins to thrust shallowly. The stretch feels good, better than your small fingers.

“Fuck yourself on my cock.”

He stops moving, his cock is buried deep in your pussy. You obey him, beginning to work your hips as you scramble for the table in front of you to help you keep your balance, sinking all the way down to the base of his cock every time. You can already feel the wall that separates you and him getting wet and sloppy with your combined juices. Reaching down for your clit, you tighten around him immediately, fingers pinching and stroking.

“Let me hear you. That’s it, let me hear you as I imagine what you look like fucking yourself on my cock. You’ll let me cum inside you right? You’ll let any random stranger like me cream your pretty pussy through a gloryhole. I want you to show me your pussy after I fill it with cum.” The voice on the other side is getting slightly breathless now, and you can feel him starting to take control with his thrusts now.

You push your ass back against the gloryhole so that he can go as hard as he wants and needs.

“Answer me. Are you just a cumslut who wants men to fuck her through gloryholes and cum inside? You love it, don’t you. Random men fucking you full of cum. Even better if they knock you up.”

“N-no… just…” Your voice sounds small and fragmented to your own ears. Your vision is going hazy. Everything in the room is a blur, everything is spinning. But the one thing that remains clear is his voice.

“No? Don’t lie to me.”

“I-just want your cum. Just yours, please.”

“Whose cum do you want? Say my name. Say it as I cum inside your pretty pussy and make it mine.”

He is going so hard now that you can feel every thrust smack your ass, his balls are hitting the gloryhole, and you wish it was hitting your ass instead.

“I’m gonna cum. Fuck, oh please, right there,” you beg him to keep going, feeling your thighs tremble and your walls start to quiver around him.

“Say my name and I’ll let you cum like a good girl.”

“Mr Ch- Mr- oh fuck, I’m coming, Yoongi, I want your cum!”

The man on the other side responds with a pleased chuckle that you can feel radiating all the way up your spine as he gives you a few sloppy thrusts before he groans, burying his cock deep as he-

Warmth seeps through your panties, and you gasp, eyes flying open.

Suddenly, the world presents itself to you in 1080p quality as you are met with the view of your ceiling. Drenched in sweat, you sit up gingerly only to grimace when you feel the stickiness of your panties.

God fucking dammit, did you seriously just have a wet dream? At this age?

The last thing you remember from last night was… working on your paper. You must have fallen asleep and migrated to your bed at some point. When you glance towards your work desk, the tell-tale signs of an all-nighter are there, alright; opened bags of chips, half empty coffee cups and your laptop still open.

Pushing your covers aside, you grumble to yourself as you hurry to clean yourself up, only to stop dead in your tracks when flashbacks of your dream come back to you in bits and pieces. And more importantly, the name that left your lips-

This cannot be happening.

You stare at yourself in the mirror. It was just a dream. Just a stupid old dream.

But dreams originate from the sub-conscious. Dreams represent the id, the repressed sexual and primal urges that are locked away and hidden from society because they are unacceptable. Having a sexual fantasy is completely normal, but more worrying is who it was about.

You press a hand to your temple as the thoughts race against each other. Sometimes, you think that pursuing this degree is a mistake because you tend to psychoanalyse yourself in a manner that is all too unhealthy.

Splashing some cold water on your face, you brush your teeth quickly and tie your hair back. When you feel significantly more human again, you dig for your phone in the mess that is your bed only to realise that you’d somehow slept through all four of your alarms- and that you’re currently 10 minutes late for your last ever session.

“Fucking hell,” you swear under your breath as you gather your materials and fly out the door.

This is ridiculous. Just fucking ridiculous.

Yoongi never runs. Yet today, he dragged himself out of bed at five in the morning just to make sure he was out of the room before Jimin was up. Jimin likes to get in his morning workouts before 7am sharp, and he is a notoriously light sleeper.

But now, run completed, drenched in sweat and feeling gross all over, Yoongi has yet to come up with a plausible excuse to get him out of his session today. The last ever session for the month, and granted, he has no actual reason to wriggle out of it. It’s just, a part of him isn’t ready for it to be over.

He should have savoured the past few days more. That sweet period of limbo where everything is possible and yet, nothing is set in stone. All weekend long that fucking lemon yellow polish had been haunting him, mocking him even. Yoongi had been oscillating between writing it off as a mere coincidence and something else; something much larger and beyond his wildest dreams. He hadn’t dared to even think it aloud for fear of unleashing a never ending stream of self-criticism.

Deciding to bite the bullet and just say whatever comes to mind, Yoongi pushes the door open, catching Jimin in the midst of pulling a shirt on.

“Hey man. Where’ve you been- wait, you don’t look so good, you doing alright?” Jimin narrows his eyes as he closes the distance between them, tugging his shirt down as he surveys Yoongi’s flushed face.

Yoongi’s just about to grumble a retort- something about still being fit enough to kick Jimin’s ass out on the track- when he stops himself. At least that run had cleared his mind up a little for him to see that Jimin is offering him an easy way out. “Um, actually I’m not feeling too good.”

“What’s wrong?” He immediately comes over to put a hand on Yoongi’s forehead. “You’ve been off ever since our game last week. If you were coming down with something, it’d be over by now.” Jimin worries his plush bottom lip as he draws his hand away. “No temperature. Were you working out? You should take it easy man.”

“Yeah, I just…” Yoongi’s voice trails off. He’s never been good at lying, especially not to Jimin’s face. As obnoxious as his roommate is sometimes, when Jimin is worried, he is the epitome of a mother hen. So he decides to keep it simple. “Your snoring kept me up last night.”

Jimin’s eyes widen in mock hurt. “Dude, what? I do not snore!!”

“That’s exactly what someone who snores all night long would say,” Yoongi says as he reaches for a towel and some spare clothes. “I’m gonna take a shower and go back to bed. Hopefully without your loud ass.”

Jimin just grumbles under his breath, still protesting as he fumbles around his room to get ready for his morning class. But suddenly, he stops in his tracks as he finds his phone. “Wait, that last session with- your last session is today. Do you want me to cancel it?”

“Could you?” Yoongi casts a glance back at Jimin for just a second, all the better to fool him into thinking that this is no big deal, as if he hadn’t been ruminating on ways to worm his way out of this experiment for the past few days. “I mean, if it’s too much trouble to reschedule, then…”

“It’s fine, I got it,” Jimin mumbles with his arms full of books as he texts with one hand. “I’m sure _- um, she won’t mind.”

Yoongi’s ears perk up at the sound of Jimin’s hasty cover up- he was sure that he accidentally almost name dropped there. When he glances over at his roommate, Jimin is avoiding all eye contact as he puts his phone away and ruffles his hair like he always does when he’s flustered or nervous. He decides to probe a little.

“Speaking of… her,” Yoongi begins. “It’s her final year project right? Why’s she not doing it in a group like you are?”

“Because she’s stubborn as always,” Jimin chuckles under his breath, pausing to slap on a little moisturizer on his face. “She thinks she’s really on to something with her thesis, though she won’t let anyone read it. Not even me, her best friend! Can you believe it?” He turns around, a glob of cream still on his nose, with an indignant expression. “She literally just told me like 10% of it. Said it was all I needed to know.”

Best friend? Hmm, now he’s getting somewhere. Trying his best to keep his voice casual, Yoongi asks, “do I know this person?”

Once again, Jimin immediately stiffens up. It’s painfully obvious in his posture that he realises he’s treading on dangerous territory now. Jimin turns back to the mirror and slowly, deliberately spreads the cream onto his skin, avoiding Yoongi’s eyes in the mirror. “Yoongi, you know I can’t tell you that. It’d ruin the sanctity of her experiment. She told you that you can’t have any contact with her outside of that room, right?”

Yoongi sighs internally. At least he tried. He’s just about to turn to head for the showers when Jimin speaks again.

“Why do you wanna know who she is? Did something happen in those sessions?” He asks cautiously, as if he is treading on broken glass. Yoongi can hear from the tone in Jimin’s voice that he’s pretending to play it off casually. “Damn, you really gotta get laid soon.”

At least Jimin gave him a way out again, even if he did it unknowingly. Purposely avoiding the first part of his question, Yoongi shrugs. “I did just get laid. Remember? That girl from your party. After our game. _____. I thought I told you. That little seven minutes in heaven stunt that you pulled?”

At the sound of your name, Jimin visibly pales. “Wh- Who? Who did you hook up with?”

“Did I get her name wrong?” Yoongi muses, searching his memory. He’d only heard it once, and he doubts he could have remembered it wrongly. “_____. She was at your party last week. Dude, you asked me to kiss her in that stupid truth or dare game!”

Jimin’s eyes slide left and right, avoiding all eye contact as his lips press into a firm line. “Did I? I was really drunk. Maybe I just don’t remember.”

Suspicion sinks into the pit of Yoongi’s stomach and drags him down, threatening to swallow him whole. He clenches his fist around his towel. Jimin’s reaction only further serves his theory that… no. It can’t be. He’s simply reading too much into things. “Yeah, you were pretty drunk there.”

Yoongi desperately needs to escape somewhere else and think about all of this stupid, stupid coincidences, the little things that are adding up here and there. He leaves Jimin still standing in their room and hightails it to the showers, forcing the memory of your lips, your kisses, and most hauntingly, your fingers, out of his mind.

“Rough morning?” When you arrive, Mr Gucci is already seated on the other side, obscured by the glory- by Mr Cheetos’s experimental setup. You forgot to reset it after your last session with him, so you reach for the panel and remove it, forcing aside unholy thoughts.

“Definitely a rough morning,” Mr Gucci nods to himself when he sees your unkempt hair, spectacles askew on your face and currently sporting your baggiest hoodie. He, on the other hand, while also dressed comfortably in a baggy shirt, pulls it off with a grace and effortlessness that you can only dream of.

“I’m sorry, did you wait long?” You hurry to get your notes in order, and more importantly, catch your breath and try to regain your composure. You’re sorry that the last session with Mr Gucci has to end this way, even more sorry that he has to see this side of you that should never be revealed to the world. “Just give me a minute to get this set up- you can start with three impressions first if you like. Last week’s were ambitious, pretty and fresh.”

“Sure,” Mr Gucci bobs his head. “Ambitious, pretty, but not-so-fresh.”

You can’t help but laugh as you make a note of this. “Guess I set myself up for that one huh?”

Mr Gucci leans forward on his elbows, intrigued. “Tell me something, Ms Prada. Do all girls have magic powers like you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, no offense,” he holds his hands up. “I’m just incredibly impressed at how different you look. I mean, from how you usually look like. I assume you overslept today and didn’t have time to get to the regular routine, but…”

“Let me ruin your fantasy for you,” you cut him off. “This is what girls wake up looking like. None of that hashtag woke up like this bullshit. You don’t have any sisters, do you?”

“None,” he confirms. “Wait, but please don’t get me wrong! I didn’t mean it in an insulting way. I’m just amazed at how much effort it takes, and that deserves incredible respect.”

Mr Gucci seems worried over having potentially offended you, but the joke he made about not being so fresh tells you that you’re at least getting somewhere with him. Complete strangers wouldn’t mention it at all, though he is still clearly treading carefully to some extent. You’re not offended at all, and you convey this with a genuine smile. “You wouldn’t believe the effort it takes to get from this- a zero to a passable six. In fact, I’m sorry you have to see this at all.”

Mr Gucci’s eyes widen. “A six? That’s the best you give yourself? You’re clearly a nine, at least!”

His sincerity really touches you as you thank him with a smile.

“Honestly, women’s beauty standards are just bullshit,” he shakes his head sadly. “If I had a superpower, I’d completely erase all the beauty standards in the world.”

“Wow, that’s interesting,” you muse while jotting down a few notes. Mr Gucci had just answered one of your potential questions on his own, and this is definitely progress. It’s far from a simple answer you expect from him, reveals something that he’s passionate about. “Usually when people talk about superpowers, they want to go back in time, fly, talk to animals, that kind of thing.”

“Hey, how’d you know? Talking to animals is my second choice,” he grins. “But yeah. I was taking a sociology mod last semester for my elective and it really got me thinking about issues like these. And how I wish it could be solved with a snap of my fingers. Just like that.”

“That’s it, I’m voting you for president,” you grin back at him. “Think of it. You’ll be a better version of Thanos. Just one snap.”

Mr Gucci bursts out in laughter at your joke, clapping his hands several times, and you really feel as if you’re making a connection here. While it did come only in the last session, there’s no doubt that there are the beginnings of something stirring here.

The timer on your desk rings, signalling the end of your session.

“So, Mr Gucci, this marks the end of our month together. Before we end, I just wanted to thank you for participating,” you put your notes aside to smile at him, sincerely regretting that you won’t be able to meet him outside of this room. He definitely seems like good company.

“Thank you for having me, and I must say, it was a new experience,” Mr Gucci says. “I didn’t know what to expect coming into this, and I think I got a lot more out of it than just extra credit.”

“That’s good to hear. Okay, for the last time ever, three impressions?”

“Friendly, cool and my type.”

After Mr Gucci is safely out the door, you reach for your phone’s camera mode to at least try and fix your hair a little before Mr Cheetos is due. Not that it would matter now, since he won’t be seeing you at all, but you feel just a tad ratty and unkempt like this.

You notice that you have a few messages from Jimin asking you if it’s possible to reschedule Mr Cheetos’s session since he’s feeling unwell. That’s strange. Such a last minute request makes things seem urgent, and you can’t help but feel your stomach flip over in worry. You press the call icon and place the phone to your ear.

“Hey- yeah, what’s up?” Jimin’s voice answers.

“Chim, I just wanted to ask if Mr- if he’s okay. I mean, it’s not anything urgent right?”

“Oh no no,” Jimin’s reply comes immediately. “He’s just feeling a little under the weather. Said he needs to rest up today. I’ll ask him when he’s free to reschedule again, then get back to you on that. Sound good?”

“Um, yeah. Sure.” Jimin’s reply leaves a lot to be desired, you find yourself craving for more details about Mr Cheetos. Instead your best friend leaves you frustrated yet unable to ask any more questions, and you curse silently. “Wait! Um, I think I should like maybe get him something. You know, like soup or um, lozenges?”

You cringe at the sound of your own voice. Immediately you wish you’d just let Jimin hang up, and you can go straight back to your room and back to bed. What if Jimin gets suspicious? What if he demands to know why you suddenly care about Mr Cheetos so much? Suddenly feeling a need to justify your actions, you clear your throat. “Because, um I was kinda sick the last time and I feel bad that I might have passed my cold to him. You know?”

Jimin’s chuckle comes from the other side of the line, and you almost heave a sigh of relief.

You’re just being paranoid. Calm the fuck down or you’ll give yourself away, you mutter to yourself.

“Why, what’d you two do in that tiny little room, hmmm?” Jimin’s innocent joke sends your blood pressure sky rocketing again, and this time you can literally feel a bead of sweat make its way down your forehead like in those cartoons, except there is nothing funny about this. “A little spit swapping? Mouth to mouth?”

“We didn’t do anything!” You exclaim in a panic, which you try to cover up with a nervous laugh. “What would we be doing other than the experiment?”

“Geez, you nearly took my eardrums out,” Jimin whines on the end of the line. “Fine, just drop by my room and leave it at the door or something. I’ll pass it to him and say it’s from you.”

More than relieved that he dropped the subject so quickly, you shoot him a quick word of thanks before cutting the line, gathering up your things as you exit the room and head for the cafeteria.

You’re not really sure what to get for a sick person; you’ve never had to take care of one before. Jimin’s the only friend who’d warrant this kind of treatment, and yet you’ve never brought him food or anything like this before. Scanning over the options quickly, you decide on a good old chicken noodle soup and place your order.

With a warm container clasped close to your chest, you send a few texts to Jimin just to let him know that you’re on the way as you ascend the stairs to his room. He replies back that he isn’t in at the moment, and you don’t want the soup to get cold outside, or even possibly getting stolen, so you decide to knock on the door to get his roommate.

It’s not till the door opens that you belatedly remember who Jimin’s roommate is… too little too late as you come face to face with Min Yoongi, whom you haven’t seen since that night.

He looks sleepy, hair tousled as if he just got out of bed, in a half yawn as he peeks his head out. You can’t help but notice his attire of a thin shirt and boxers, but then you remind your eyes to stay strictly at eye level.

“Jimin, can’t you fucking let me sleep in pea- oh.” Yoongi immediately sobers up when he realises it’s not his roommate he’s talking to. “_____. Wh-what are you doing here?”

The moment Jimin gets off the phone, an inevitable sense of dread nearly consumes him. Jimin fucked up.

You’re absolutely going to murder him when you find out. This was never supposed to happen. How could he have let his lines get crossed like that? And as if Yoongi’s suspicion isn’t enough, you just had to call him right at that moment like some sort of freaky omniscient being as if you had heard every single word of his conversation with Yoongi.

His temples are throbbing. The lengths he has to go to keep this stupid secret. And more importantly, keep the two of you apart.

He’s just thankful that the whole conversation took place over the phone as opposed to face to face. He’d already had a hard time getting away from Yoongi earlier, but as his best friend, he’s almost certain you’ll see right through him. Since when did his life become this complicated? Jimin just wants to play basketball and get pussy. And be complimented on his ass. Is that really too much to ask for?

On his way to lab, Jimin’s phone pings again.

You: hey, at ur door in 5. u in?

Jimin: nope, omw to lab. Just leave it on the doorknob

You: it’ll get cold, jackass

You: I’ll ask ur roommate to take it in

Annoyed at the sudden show of your caring side, Jimin tosses his phone into his bag as he joins his final year project group in the lab, opening his laptop and clicking open a few reports he’d typed up a few days ago. But there’s something stopping him from focusing, a niggling thought at the back of his head…

I’ll ask ur roommate to take it in

Fuck.

Jimin all but shoves his laptop away and sprints for the door, yelling out a hasty apology to his team members as he fumbles for his phone before deciding to pour all his energy into making it to his room as fast as possible to intercept you. It only takes about 10 minutes typically to get from his room to the psychology building, but with a dead sprint, Jimin makes it in five.

But it’s still too late.

He sees you and Yoongi staring awkwardly at each other, and thankfully for him, Yoongi hasn’t seemed to realise what you’re carrying- making Jimin’s life infinitely easier, at least for now. Yoongi is fidgeting awkwardly on his feet, you are nervously running a hand through your hair- a habit you picked up from him, and Jimin can feel the awkwardness emanating off the both of you.

“H-hey guys,” he wedges his body in between you and Yoongi, conveniently blocking his view of you. His breaths are coming in pants and he can’t get his words out in time- maybe he isn’t as fit as he’d like to think. “Forgot something- for lab. What are you guys doing?”

You give him a strange look as if you’re seeing through all his lies, and Jimin panics for a second, afraid that you’re going to give yourself away.

“Oh, you needed to talk to me about something right?” Jimin hurries on, turning his back to Yoongi and ushering you away from the door. “Let me uh, get my stuff and I’ll be right out.”

“What’s with you today, Park?” You narrow your eyes in suspicion. “You’re being all cagey. It’s not like I haven’t seen the utter disaster that is your room by now. I can’t say I approve of your lack of cleanliness, but it’s nothing to be surprised about.”

“Yoongi just put up some porn posters all over our walls!” Jimin blurts, and he immediately wants to kick himself. Really? Porn posters? Couldn’t he have come up with something better?

Behind him, Yoongi just lets out another yawn, unimpressed whatsoever, turning to go back to bed. For once Jimin is thankful for his roommate’s unhealthy addiction to sleep. Yoongi doesn’t even bat an eyelid or seem to have heard Jimin at all. “Just get your stuff and get the fuck out of here, Park. Nice seeing you, ______.”

Grateful for the opening, Jimin darts in and pretends to grab a random notebook before letting the door slam behind him, his cheeks bright red with exertion and maybe a little bit of panic. He glances down to see the paper bag in your hands and reaches for it. “You wanted to pass me this?”

“Not you, asshat. For Mr… for the test subject. The one who cancelled today.” You clarify, handing him the bag. “You said he wasn’t feeling well…?”

“I did, yeah I did,” Jimin grips the bag tightly as his breathing returns to normal. That was too close a call. “I’ll make sure to get it to him.”

“Okay,” you nod to yourself, eyes straying to Jimin’s door once more, and he can feel a fresh wave of panic. “Is Yoongi… is he okay though? He looked a little pale there.”

“What?” Jimin laughs nervously, turning to follow your gaze and surreptitiously positioning himself in between you and the door. “Haven’t you noticed he’s always as pale as a sheet? Didn’t you already see his scrawny, pale ass anyway?”

Now it’s your turn to be on edge as you immediately slide your gaze away from Jimin’s. “Wh-what do you mean? I didn’t see anything the other night.”

“Who said it was the other night?” Jimin raises his eyebrows, and you are caught in your own slip-up. Still, the stubborn set of your jaw tells him that you’ll deny it till kingdom come. “Oh come on, do you really think I’m stupid? That look between the two of you just now practically screams it.” Jimin exhales, knowing that he’s treading on dangerous territory here, but he has to confirm it. Has to know if you and Yoongi really did hook up and if he’s really in deep shit.

“It was nothing, ok? Just a one-night stand. Doesn’t mean anything, you know I don’t fuck strangers like that,” you mumble with a roll of your eyes, pulling out your phone to check the time. “Aren’t you beyond late for your meeting anyway? I don’t think you have time to be standing here and interrogating me about my sex life-“

Jimin’s eyes widen as he realises just how long he’s been standing here. “Oh fuck, shit, gotta go. You’re not off the hook though!”

A few hours later, Yoongi hears the door creak open again and he lets out a small groan, turning over in bed and opening his eyes. Jimin is back from class, and he comes over to pull the covers off.

“Get up, lazy ass. Got you something, you should eat it. You’ll feel better.”

Yoongi lifts his head off his pillow in interest as Jimin sets down a paper bag on his desk and lifts out a tumbler from inside it. When he uncaps it, the tantalizing smell of chicken and soup wafts toward him, and even he can’t resist it as he climbs out of bed slowly.

“What’s with you today, Park? You’re being unusually nice to me,” Yoongi comments as he seats himself at his desk, reaching for the spoon and starting to dig into the warm concoction.

Jimin takes offense at this, bottom lip pouting. “I’m always nice to you!”

For a few moments, nothing is heard except for the noises of slurping as Yoongi gobbles everything up as if he hasn’t eaten in days. When he’s nearly done with the food, he turns to look at Jimin, who’s casually using his phone on his bed.

“Hey, you know _____ pretty well, right?”

“Yeah, why?” Jimin answers back with his attention still focused on his phone. “She’s my best friend, although she’s annoying as hell sometimes.”

“Is she the same best friend as the one I’m doing the experiment for?”

Jimin’s thumbs freeze over his phone screen; Yoongi can hear his sharp intake of breath, and he knows he’s got Jimin now.

“They’re the same person aren’t they?”

“What makes you think that?” Jimin is fiddling with his phone case, a telltale sign of his anxiety. He stubbornly refuses to look at Yoongi, but Yoongi refuses to give up. He’ll squeeze it out of Jimin somehow, it’s the only way he can find out for sure.

“You’ve always been a terrible liar, Jimin,” Yoongi sighs as he leans back in his chair. “Now spill. Everything. Why did you set me up with her at your party? You’re the only one out of the three of us who knows so-“

“I was having a brainfuck, alright,” Jimin exhales wearily, giving up all pretense now. “I got my wires crossed. I was really drunk that night, and when I saw her and you together, some weird part of my brain thought you looked really good together. It must have been the way you were looking at her, because I swear you never look like that unless you’re pining for someone-“

“I do NOT pine over girls,” Yoongi immediately retorts, his cheeks flushing pink along with the tips of his ears.

“-how was I to know that you’d end up fucking? For all I know that night, it ended with a harmless kiss,” Jimin throws his hands up in the air, pushing himself off the bed to start pacing back and forth. “You two were already talking before I could stop you. If I stepped in to separate you, that would be suspicious as fuck. And anyway, as far as ______ is concerned, you and Mr Cheetos are two separate people. So what’s the problem here? And as long as you play along-”

“She’s not two separate people to me,” Yoongi fights back. “Not now, not anymore. How can I keep going like this, keep lying to her?”

“Look,” Jimin sits on his bed and massages his temples. “You can’t, under any circumstances, let her find out before she submits her thesis. The truth will destroy her; you know it will. Not only will she insist on redoing her preliminary experiment, the added stress of it all is just… she doesn’t deserve this.”

Jimin is right. You definitely don’t deserve to have all your hard work go down the drain like that. There is a moment of silence as Yoongi contemplates his choices. A part of him is dying to see your face now that he knows everything, put the two halves of you that he knows together in order to make a whole. Even as he admits this to himself, it’s painfully obvious that he’s being selfish, doing so would benefit no one but himself. And it would destroy you in the process.

All for what? Just so he can have a shot at being with you? What makes him think you’d even want to see his face after he single-handedly ruined your thesis and potential graduation? Maybe not single handedly, because there is Jimin to blame too, but still.

“That’s from her, by the way. I told her you were sick to cancel yesterday. That’s why she was at our room earlier.” Jimin breaks his train of thought.

“But isn’t the sanctity of the experiment already ruined anyway?” Yoongi questions, a last ditch effort. “We had contact outside of that experiment room.”

“No, because to her, you are two separate people,” Jimin explains. “Up till now, all the observations and remarks she has on her report are based on interacting with you as Mr Cheetos, not Min Yoongi. Within that room, those are two different people. Any feelings she developed for Mr Cheetos is completely unrelated to any feelings she has for Min Yoongi. You understand what I’m saying, right?”

Yoongi slumps hard against the chair, closing his eyes. He swallows hard. “So what do we do now?”

“We pretend,” Jimin has his lips in a firm line. “She rescheduled your last session for tomorrow, by the way. Just have to tough it out for one more day. And after she submits everything, which should be the day after.”

“… and after that?” Yoongi hates the way his voice sounds. So full of hope but yet so vulnerable at the same time. The unspoken part of his question lingers in the air, but Jimin is more than adept to read between the lines.

“You’re free to do whatever you want,” he shrugs. “Tell her, or not. It’s up to you, buddy.”

Now that he knows, everything is different.

How could he not have figured out it was you right after that night? Your fingers are so distinct, even without the coat of nail polish, he’s sure that he could recognise them anywhere.

On the last session, Yoongi is more self-conscious than usual. Is his voice alright? Maybe he should try to speak in a lower voice so that you won’t recognise him. You and him have barely spoken to each other outside of this room, so there’s not much danger there, but he still doesn’t want to risk it.

Which prompts your question, “are you feeling okay, Mr Cheetos? You sound a little rough. Sorry we had to do this today, it’s just that I need to wrap everything up soon, and-“

“It’s fine,” he clears his throat, flexing his fingers in your grip as he leans his head against the wall slightly. “I’m fine. Sorry for yesterday, by the way. And thank you for the soup. It was really good, and it helped a lot.”

“Oh, you’re welcome,” your voice comes from the other side. “I’ll make it quick so you can rest, okay? Your last three impressions of me were relatable, intriguing and familiar. Any change?”

Yoongi bites his lip hard at the irony. “No, no change.”

“Okay thanks,” there is a pause and Yoongi assumes that you’re writing down some notes. “Question for today: if you had a superpower, what kind of power would it be?”

This time Yoongi has to pause and think, force himself to concentrate and stop focusing on the fact that it’s you sitting on the other side of the room from him. “I think… I’d like to be a superhero who saves people from disappointment and rejection. Like I’ll absorb it into myself? Sounds lame right?”

“No it doesn’t,” you answer immediately. “I’ve never heard of that one before. Tell me more maybe?”

“Well, if you think about it, traditional superheroes are all concerned with physical and mortal danger, all that stuff, but even they themselves aren’t invincible to intangible things like disappointment and rejection. And I think it’s because they are intangible that makes them so devastating and insidious. There’s no one in this world who’s impervious to disappointment and rejection.” Yoongi self-consciously flexes his fingers, wondering if his hand is getting a little too sweaty and whether you’d mind or not.

There’s a brief pause and then a sound as if you’re humming in agreement. When you speak, your voice has dropped to a lower, more intimate register, one that sends shivers up Yoongi’s spine. He just hopes it doesn’t telegraph down his arm and over to your side. “I’d very much like to be saved from disappointment and rejection. How should I call you when I need you then?”

Yoongi knows you’re joking, that this is entirely just for the sake of the experiment. This is not an invitation to tell you his real name and just let the cat out of the bag. But being behind this screen has him more reckless than usual, what could it hurt if he drops a few hints here and there? “You’d have to call me by my real name. Somehow, I think Mr Cheetos doesn’t quite cut it for a superhero name.”

His heart is pounding in his chest, mind racing to come up with all the possible ways you could respond to this.

“I guess I’ll remain disappointed then,” you say with an exaggerated sigh. “But actually, I do have a real question for you. If you want to save everyone from disappointment and rejection, does that mean that you don’t believe in the ‘everything happens for a reason’ mantra?”

“No way, I don’t believe in that bullshit,” Yoongi shakes his head vehemently. “I always thought it was utter nonsense, just shit white girls put on posters in their rooms.”

“You mean like the hashtag just girly things?” You are laughing on the other side, and the sound of your gentle laughter brings a smile to his own face. “What an absolute meme it has turned into. Because of people like you.”

“What can I say? I’m one of those assholes,” Yoongi has a shitfaced grin on, wishing he could see the look on your face, although for now he’ll settle on just briefly skimming his thumb over the top of your knuckles, hoping he can get away with it, and he does. “It’s so full of shit. Sometimes things just happen and there isn’t a set reason for it. Maybe there is, but we aren’t always able to know. If we believe there’s always a reason for something, we’ll drive ourselves crazy trying to find out.”

“So sometimes things just… happen? For no reason at all?”

“Yup,” Yoongi says firmly, popping the ‘p’ against his lips for emphasis. “Just accept it and move on. Hurts less that way.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from personal experience.”

Yoongi makes a non-committal sound in the back of his throat, and you laugh on the other side. “Alright, next time I’ll try doing that.”

There’s a brief pause before you speak again. “I think we’re just about done here. Anything else you want to say to me before we end with three impressions?”

Yoongi fights past the lump in his throat to say something, anything. Regret tastes as bitter as wormwood, and he can’t get the words out. Instead, he bites his lip hard. “No, nothing. My three impressions are still the same. Relatable, intriguing and… familiar.”

“Okay, noted. Thanks for all your help here, Mr Cheetos. I really appreciate it,” you squeeze his hand lightly as you say this, and he can feel his treacherous heart skip a beat just from this simple gesture. “It was great to have you here.”

“It was great to be here too.” Somehow his words sound choked even to his own ears, and he can only pray and hope that you don’t pick up on it. For once Yoongi is glad that you can’t see the look on his face and he can’t see yours either, for it would make it all the more difficult to prise his palm away from yours and stand. “So, um… see you around, I guess?”

There is a hopeful note in his voice that he picks up on right off the bat, and Yoongi hates it. Hates being so vulnerable like this, but somehow with you he’s always in this state.

“See you around, then,” you confirm, withdrawing your arm.

Yoongi exits the room without sparing even a single glance back, afraid that it might make him act on impulse and tear down that damn barrier to really see you. He opens the door, focusing on the way his fingers close around the handle, steps out, letting the door close gently behind him.

And that’s that.

Your eyes are sore, fingers and shoulders aching and still, you’re not quite satisfied with what you have. The midnight deadline is drawing closer and closer, and ever since you’d ended the experiment with Mr Cheetos, you’d locked yourself in your room without coming out.

Blowing a sigh through your lips, you lean back in your seat for a moment, closing your eyes to chase away the glaring imprint of your computer screen. Then you open them again and scroll through your notes for the last session.

Week Four Notes and Observations

Test Subject: Mr Gucci (Control Experiment)

Initial Impressions: Ambitious, pretty, not-so-fresh

(Note: this was a joke in reference to observer’s slightly unkempt state. Observer and participant shared a laugh over this)

Final Impressions: Friendly, cool, and ‘my type’

Personal observations: Conversation seemed a lot more natural this time around. Subject offered genuine personal opinions to question posed, expressed more of his personality. Definite progress in terms of emotional intimacy has been made as compared to the first week. Overall, there was an easy camaraderie between subject and observer, a result of spending the past month together.

Test Subject: Hot Cheetos

Initial Impressions: Relatable, intriguing, familiar (no change from week three)

Final Impressions: Relatable, intriguing, familiar (still no change)

Personal observations: Although subject’s impressions did not change throughout, he was very willing to share insights behind his thought process as he answered the question posed. Subject seems to have formed a little bit of an attachment (?) to the Observer, hinting desire to interact with the Observer outside of the experiment. Such results serve to be in line with the original hypothesis.

It’s enough. It has to be enough. As the minutes tick by, you scroll up and scan through the previous weeks again to see if you’ve missed anything. Then you move on to the last part of your preliminary proposal.

Final Conclusion

Throughout this month long trial experiment, the main aim was to test how human bonds are formed and cultivated under specific conditions. More importantly was to study whether the element of anonymity and physical contact would contribute to a landslide difference between subjects and their willingness to connect emotionally with another stranger. As the results from each week have proven, test subject who wasn’t allowed anonymity nor physical contact took a lot longer to establish a sense of trust and non-superficial interaction with the Observer. Whereas the test subject who was allowed anonymity and physical contact demonstrated a solid and perhaps even lasting emotional connection with the Observer.

In your mind still lingers all the things you and Mr Cheetos talked about during your sessions. Thank God you don’t have to write down the exact content of them in your report, for it would be an incredible violation of privacy, and you prefer to keep his words to yourself. Something only between the two of you, a shared secret. Even though you don’t know his true identity, you can be rest assured that something tethers you to him at least in this reality.

With just minutes to spare before the deadline, you save your document and upload it to be submitted, indulging in a stretch before you tumble into bed for a long, well-deserved sleep.

It’s a bit strange; life after submitting a huge proposal. It’s like you don’t know what to do with your life anymore, like you’ve lost a sense of purpose. You have to wait a bit to hear your supervisor’s comments on your proposal, and in order to distract yourself from harping over it, you decide to go see Jimin. That brat always has a knack for annoying the heck out of you when you need it most.

When you get to his room you try the doorknob without even bothering to knock, completely forgetting that he has a roommate. As a result, you stumble upon Min Yoongi dressed in boxers and no shirt, sitting at his desk working on his computer.

“Oh shit, um sorry, I was looking for Jimin,” you immediately avert your gaze, cheeks heating up. “I should have knocked. I’m sorry, I’ll just let you, uh…”

“Why so flustered?” He responds in a lazy drawl, turning in his chair to face the door, not in the least bit concerned about his half naked state. You wish he’d have the decency to rush and put on a shirt and some pants, at least. “It’s not like you caught me doing anything… illicit. I’m just on my laptop.”

The way you avoid his gaze stubbornly is just adorable, Yoongi can’t resist riling you up further. “Or did you think I was doing something else?”

“Do you know where Jimin is?” You avoid his question as you close the door further so that only a crack remains, shielding your body behind it.

“Hmm? Park?” Yoongi pretends to think for a while before he shrugs. “I dunno. Probably working out or something. Why?”

“Nothing, I just… well, see you later,” you say in a hurry and close the door, but Yoongi is on his feet and has his hand on the doorknob in a flash.

“Hey, wait. Why’re you acting so weird around me? Is it because of that night? We never got to talk about it properly, you know,” Yoongi pulls the door open a tad, fighting against your strength, and you must say that he is a lot stronger than you would think, given his wiry frame. He leans forward and lowers his voice to a sinful drawl. “So I figured now’s a good time as any other.”

“What’s there to talk about?” You sigh, relenting and letting him pull the door open to his liking. “It was just… it was just that. No big deal.”

Yoongi laughs and throws his head back as if he’s thoroughly amused with you. “Damn, you’re really a prude, aren’t you? Can’t even say the word. We fucked, we had sex, I had my cock in your pussy-“

“God, stop!” You hiss at him, stepping inside and slamming the door closed before someone overhears the filth that is pouring from his lips.

Internally Yoongi grins at his genius, he got you to come back inside without even touching you. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it. You’re so cute, Ms Prude.”

Your lips twitch at the nickname, and Yoongi wonders if that’s enough. But then you frown at him and cross your arms. “Fine, we had sex. We talked about it too. Is that enough?”

“Enough?” Yoongi raises a brow, copying your stance. “No, not nearly enough for me. See, when I have sex that mind-blowing with someone, I tend to want repeat acts. Multiple.”

You sniff and toss your hair over your shoulder, turning away from him primly. “Sorry, I don’t fuck people I don’t know.”

Yoongi pretends to frown in mock hurt when really, your cute little attitude and playing hard to get is more endearing to him than ever. “Really? You don’t know me? I spat in your mouth and you swallowed it. Among other things. I’d say exchange of bodily fluids counts as getting to know someone…”

You put a hand to your temple and sigh loudly, as if Yoongi’s some thick idiot. “Not that, you asshat. I meant emotionally. Mentally. I don’t know who you are as a person. That kind of thing. I slept with you that night because… I don’t know why. I just lost control, and I can assure you that it’s not something that happens often.”

Yoongi is quiet for a moment, letting your words sink in as he contemplates his response. It occurs to him that this is the perfect opening, and all traces of his smirk vanish from his face. He turns to look at you with an intensity unmatched, and sensing his seriousness, you straighten your posture.

“What if I told you that you do know me? As a person. You know my deepest darkest fears, my hopes and dreams, and I know yours.” Yoongi holds his breath. It’s now or never. Fuck it. He’s never been one to live life without taking a few risks here and there anyway. “What if I told you… I am Mr Cheetos?”

The words have an immediate effect on you as you take a step back, jaw dropping and your hands coming up to cover your mouth. It feels like all the air has just been sucked out of the room, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe, or even think straight. “Wait. I don’t… I don’t believe you. How can- it’s just-“

“It’s true, every single bit,” Yoongi says calmly. “How else would I know that nickname? The top thing on your bucket list is to perform in front of people you know with a mask on because you want to be a better version of yourself. And your biggest fear is being inadequate, being unable to make it on your own, living your whole life as merely average.”

Hearing your own deepest darkest secrets repeated back to you is bone-chilling, and unsettling to say the least, but then another part of you realises the implication of all this. You and Yoongi fucked at Jimin’s party right in the middle of your experiment. Which means that you continued to see him even after you’d had contact with him outside of that room. That wet dream with Yoongi and Mr Cheetos now seems like the fates laughing down at you, scorning you.

The entire experiment is ruined. The results are contaminated, and the worst thing is that you’ve already submitted it and there is no way of getting it back. Your fate is sealed.

“How long have you known?” You ask quietly.

“I suspected it on the third week.” Yoongi starts slowly. “But I never did anything to confirm it till… till this week. Everything was just falling into place so uncannily, and you know Jimin sucks at keeping a secret so he…”

“My god. I’m going to fucking kill Park Jimin,” you clench your fists. “That stupid little fucker knew all along! He made us make out with each other at his party knowing full well that-“

“Wait, he was drunk, he didn’t know we slept together till I told him,” Yoongi rushes in to defend his roommate, though he can sense that your anger is steadily mounting. “He didn’t mean to set us up at the party together. It was meant to be harmless, he didn’t know we’d-“

As enraged as you are, you’re still able to sift through your emotions and see reason, a quality that you’re proud of, maybe not at this moment though. Jimin only made the two of you exchange a kiss. Never forced you to go any further than that. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours. For being unable to resist his sweet lips and alluring touches, for giving in to temptation far too easily. Now your entire future is ruined.

You sink down to the ground in defeat, closing your eyes as you feel a tear escape onto your cheek. You hear Yoongi call out your name, feel his hand on your cheek wiping the tear away, but you move your head away weakly.

“It’s ruined, it’s all gone now, my proposal,” you are fighting back tears. “The experimental results are contaminated. I had contact with you outside this room without even realising it. Come to think of it, I may have had contact with Mr… the other subject too without even knowing it… fuck, I’m so fucking stupid, it’s all ruined!!!”

Yoongi scrambles onto his knees in front of you, the sight of your tears is heart wrenching. He cradles your face in his hands, forces you to look at him. Your breathing is unevenly fast, and he can see that you are having a panic attack, unable to think straight as the tears roll down your face.

“______. Just breathe with me. Look at me and breathe. In, one… two… three. Out, one… two… three,” Yoongi forces you to concentrate on his voice, fighting the urge to take you in his arms and hold you close. He repeats the mantra until your sobs have quietened, and you are staring blankly at his chest.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Your voice is small, and there is a lost look in your eyes.

“It’s not ruined, your proposal isn’t gone,” Yoongi tries to recall the exact words Jimin had said to him the other day. From another pysch major’s perspective, Jimin seemed confident that your thesis would still be valid. “Within that room, you still knew me as two different people. Mr Cheetos and Min Yoongi are two unrelated people to you right till this very moment. All the observations you recorded are still valid. You’re right when you said you don’t know me, Min Yoongi. So it couldn’t have affected your observations in any way. You understand?”

You are quiet for a moment as you listen to him, but then you shake your head stubbornly. “No, no it’s not, I have to get my proposal back and redo the whole thing, the experiment’s not valid anymore-“

“How is it not valid?” Yoongi fights the urge to shake some sense into you. “Your experiment… it has something to do with studying the relationship between two people right?”

“Y-yes, something like that,” you answer him. “That’s why it was so important that you and I have no prior contact with each other, and have our interactions limited to that room only. That way I can determine that any result comes purely from the experiment itself and…”

“And what result were you looking for?” Yoongi presses. “Now that it’s over, you can tell me, right?”

You hesitate for a beat before you give in with a sigh. “Emotional intimacy. That’s why it’s just… it’s all wrong, all fucking wasted, and…”

“God, for such an amazingly bright woman, you can be so dense sometimes,” Yoongi takes you by the shoulders. “You practically made me fucking fall in love with you, do you not understand? If anything, it should prove your theory right!”

His words hit you like a bullet straight to the gut, and for a moment you can’t react. Your words trip over each other as you stare at the man in front of you, his eyes alight with just how sincere he is, and the way he wears that frustrated expression on his face from trying to get you to understand. “Y-you’re… what now?”

“I’m in love with you. You made me fall in love with you,” Yoongi repeats it a second time, even more slowly now. “From that moment I accidentally stuck my dick into that hole, I was as good as a goner. And every session we had after that I could feel myself falling deeper and deeper. It was fucking killing me to keep pretending that I didn’t know it was you on the other side. And to walk out knowing that I could never see you again? I’m far too selfish for that.”

You shake your head in confusion, struggling to comprehend all the facts that are being thrown at you now. “Is that why you chose to tell me now? Instead of… earlier?”

“Jimin said it was better this way,” Yoongi sighs. “He was right. He’s sorry, by the way. And I know it’s a lot to take in, so just… I’ll leave you alone. Give you some time to digest it all. It was a huge blow to me back then too, so… I understand what it’s like.”

You can see the reluctance on his face as Yoongi pulls away, offering you a hand to help you stand up. Shakily, you get to your feet, and he withdraws his hand. Strangely enough, the action sends a pang right through your heart. Awkwardly you shuffle to the door, peeking at his face which betrays no emotion. “I guess I’ll um… yeah. I’ll get going then.”

“See you,” Yoongi nods as he watches you slip out the door, and then you’re gone, for the second time.

Now that the shock has worn off and you’ve had a bit of time to think, to realise that your proposal isn’t in jeopardy after all, you’re a lot calmer. What’s a lot more challenging is reconciling the two different people that you know into one.

You don’t know Min Yoongi. But you know Mr Cheetos. And now they’re the same person, so somehow you have to merge them. It’s beyond futile to deny that you’re more than intrigued by your interactions with Mr Cheetos in that room, and if he was Min Yoongi all along...

You sigh as you toss your phone across the room, ignoring yet another call from Jimin. That sneaky bastard deserves to be on edge for a while more. This whole thing is partially his fault, anyway.

You can’t resist pulling up your report and scrolling through it again, reading all the observations about Mr Cheetos in a new light now. With every word comes the memories of you and him in that room together, and if you think about it, you should have seen it coming earlier. That conversation about fears you had with Yoongi in his room where you thought you’d mistaken him for someone else. And that stupid vivid wet dream. As it turns out, it wasn’t the unveiling of your lewd desires but your subconscious’s way of warning you.

How ironic.

You sigh as you open your email and address it to your professor. Then, your hands hover over the keyboard as you ponder over what you’re about to do. You can’t just sit here and do nothing, not when you can’t deny the facts any longer. Min Yoongi and Mr Cheetos are one person, and as the seconds tick by, it’s no longer as hard to swallow as it was when you first found out.

Which leaves only one thing to be done. You quickly open your proposal and make the necessary changes in red before attaching it and pressing send before you can have any second thoughts.

There. One loose end tied up. Now for the last one.

You push your chair back and head for Yoongi’s room. It’s already past midnight now, so you’re not even sure that it’s appropriate for you to be doing such a thing, but fuck it. You can’t wait a single second longer.

This time, you make sure to knock first, and disappointingly, it’s Jimin who answers.

“Oh,” your face sours when you see him, and his is the direct opposite.

“Hey, _____! I’ve been calling you for hours, I thought you died!” Jimin’s eyes widen at the sight of you. He at least as the decency to look guilty when you glare at him.

“Where’s Yoongi? I need to talk to him,” you demand.

“He’s uh… he’s just…”

“I’m here, why?” Yoongi peeks his head out from behind Jimin, pushing up a pair of glasses higher on his nose. “_____?”

“Could we… could we talk?” You say hesitantly.

“Sure,” Yoongi replies, turning to look at Jimin. “Park, do you mind?”

Jimin immediately jumps to reply, sensing the tension between the two of you. “S-sure, take your time! I’ll just uh… go sleep at Jungkook’s tonight. Take all the time you need.”

And then he grabs his pillow and hightails it out of the room.

“Stupid punk,” you mutter under your breath as you step inside. “What does he think we’re going to do all night that he can’t come back here?”

“You’re right, we’re just talking,” Yoongi agrees. “It’s not like we haven’t been alone together in a room and not jumped each other’s bones before- oh wait…”

You smack him sharply on the arm as you glare at him. “You’re such a fucking sleeze, Min.”

But he notices that a smile tugging at the corner of your lips as you make your way over to his desk.

“So…” Yoongi starts awkwardly, rubbing his neck.

“So… I wanted to tell you something. I wrote in to my professor because I needed to change something on my proposal. I felt like I couldn’t turn it in without being truthful about what happened in the experiment.”

Yoongi feels a lump beginning to form in his throat. “Okay… I hope you didn’t write about me sticking my dick into that hole, because-“

“No, you idiot, of course I didn’t,” you roll your eyes as you pull out a folder you’d been carrying with you. “The changes are here. You wanna read it? It does concern you quite a bit, so I thought…”

“Sure, why not?” Yoongi reaches for the piece of paper from you, willing his hand to stop shaking as he reads through it.

Final Conclusion

… Whereas the test subject who was allowed anonymity and physical contact demonstrated a solid and perhaps even lasting emotional connection with the Observer. At the end of the experiment, said test subject revealed to being ‘in love’ with the Observer by admitting that he had been harbouring deeper and deeper emotions for the Observer as the experiment progressed. As of now it is yet unclear whether these emotions truly count as love or merely just infatuation, as it was an unprecedented result that the Observer did not seek to define the parameters of prior to the experiment. To add on, it has to be acknowledged that the Observer herself does share a similar degree of emotional intimacy with the subject. As such, it would be pertinent to conclude that this observation only further strengthens the author’s main thesis of the singularity theory.

Yoongi reaches the end of the paragraph with his breath stuck in his chest as he lowers the piece of paper, only to find you looking at him nervously.

“Is it… is it okay? I mean, I already sent it to my professor, so yeah, but I just wanted to… y’know…”

It’s cute when you’re nervous and you ramble on and on like that. Yoongi grins a gummy little smile at you as he reaches for your waist and pulls you in for a kiss, your lips meeting for the first time that night, and damn do you taste good. Like everything he’s ever wanted, all the longing and the pent up desire of the past month unleashed into this single kiss. Your lips and tongue clash against each other, too reckless to take it slowly and enjoy each other, too desperate to prove to himself that you are really right in front of him, and he’s not letting you slip away this time.

Finally he draws away, panting because you stole the breath right out of his lungs. “It’s perfect.”

All the tension eases out of your features as you circle your arms around his waist, resting your cheek against his chest.

“But wait, you think I’m just infatuated with you?” Yoongi pulls away to frown at you, but there is a teasing smile on his lips.

“Hmmm, I dunno,” you shrug back. “According to science, infatuation is different from love, it’s a lot harder to prove that love exists between two people, most relationships are just borne out of infatuation…”

Yoongi shuts you up with his lips attacking a particularly sensitive spot on your collarbone, making you moan his name. “You know, it’s hot when you talk about science and psychology and all that shit. But I’d rather hear my name instead.”

Your breaths come in short pants as he sinks his teeth into your tender flesh for a moment before soothing the spot with his tongue. “Li-like I said, Min. Infatuated with me, you are.”

“Shut up, I’m fucking in love with you,” Yoongi reprimands you with a sharp pinch of your nipple.

You smile against his neck, playing with the baby hairs at the nape of it. “Prove it to me then, Mr Cheetos.”

#bts #bangtan bookclub #btssmutclub #bangtanwriters-net #bts fics #bts yoongi smut #bts smut #suga smut

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weshallneverrevolt · 5 years

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B&C Behind the Scenes: Retro Video Capture On a Budget

People who follow Bread and Circuses know that the blog is dedicated almost entirely to pop culture analysis. But people who are my friends also know that I’m a huge geek for computer hardware. So today, you’ll get you a man who can do both. This is my first behind the scenes feature, where I talk about crazy learning experiences in being a small-time YouTuber. This piece will be very technical, so I don’t blame you for skipping it.

The next project for Bread and Circuses is a full documentary and retrospective on Final Fantasy IX (2000, PlayStation), maybe the most important game in my life and one of the best RPGs ever made. Due to the scope of the video, I’m replaying all the original Final Fantasy games for the original PlayStation to jog my memory and give context for the less researchy parts. I am doing this on original hardware and a tube TV, without resorting to emulation or the re-releases. And I’ll be recording the entire game.

The choice for original hardware came for a few reasons. For one, the newer ports of Final Fantasy games are…mixed, at best. IX’s updated ports feature higher quality models and cutscenes, but the backgrounds are blurry, the new fonts and interface are hideous, and the overall “feel” of the original game is somewhat lost. As inspiration for writing the script, I also want the nostalgic experience of how I first experienced the game.

With that being said, I had a major hurdle to overcome: how do I record 50+ hours of gameplay from a 1995 console?

Step 1: Capture Setup

Most game capture these days is done in two ways: via the device playing the game, or via a capture card. The first method is quite easy on PC: you just fire up Open Broadcaster Suite, use a quick setup guide and you’re good to go. This is what I’ve done for all my videos thus far.

For modern consoles, you can use an HDMI capture card like the Elgato HD60. The cards aren’t exactly cheap, but they’re affordable enough for most streamers and let’s players.

But there’s one problem: both the original PlayStation and PlayStation 2 do not have HDMI output. The early model PS3s can play PS1 games and have native HDMI, but they are rare, expensive, and often break.

While you can buy HDMI adapters for the OG PlayStation, they are spotty in quality and present yet another challenge: such adapters often introduce noticeable input lag. Though FFIX is not a fast-paced game, the lag is still bothersome. They also don’t work with my tube TV, which is critical for my desired creative process.

That leaves me with two capture options: composite or S-Video. Composite video is the little yellow guy you used to plug into your tube TV. It looks decent on those, but when captured digitally, the blurriness and drab colors are immediately apparent. It’s for this reason that I purchased S-video cables; without going into boring technical detail, S-Video delivers far richer colors. Because the adapter includes both, I can output to my TV and computer at the same time with no additional equipment!

Speaking of adapters, the PS2 also has the option to output component video, arguably the best analog video available. While capture solutions exist for component video, my tube TV does not accept it. So to use component, I would need a system of complicated adapters and converters to both record on my computer and play on my TV at the same time. It’s too much hassle for not enough results.

So instead, I did some research and bought this little guy: the Hauppauge USB Live-2. There are many adapters like it, but Hauppauge has brand recognition in this area. This adapter also uses 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, meaning that it sacrifices very little in color depth compared to some cheaper models. It plugs into any USB port.

My tube TV only supports mono sound, which means it only needs one audio cable. I hooked up the left channel (white cable) to my TV, and the right channel (red cable) to my capture card. When outputting FFIX in mono mode, both devices receive the same sounds, and the music doesn’t suffer from missing stereo effects. Perfection.

Step 2: PS1 or PS2?

So as most people know, the PlayStation 2 is backwards compatible with original PlayStation games. The method by which this is done, however, differs based on the model.

Early PS2s have an actual PS1 processor on their motherboard. For the PS2 it’s used for sound and input/output, but when playing a PS1 game this CPU is instead, providing nearly perfect PS1 support. Sony actually did the same thing with the first PS3, but soon realized it was very expensive and scrapped it.

For later models of the PS2 – the slimlines – Sony switched to software emulation to save costs and space. The software emulation works very well, but it is just that: emulation. It is very rare for emulators to be literally perfect replications of the original experience, and Sony’s for the PS2 – called POPS – is not 100% accurate. I also don’t have a slim, so there’s that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I first dug out my old PlayStation 1, purchased new in 1998. While the system itself still works shockingly well (despite some skipping during movies), I quickly ran into a problem: the PS1 outputs at 240p. For the uninitiated, video nomenclature like 240p refers to the number of lines in the image along with the scan type. So 240p means there are 240 lines of pixels in the image, and they are updated progressively, meaning all at once.

Older tube TVs can accept 240p input, but output it in interlaced form. This means that the TV quickly updates every other line of the image, rather than the entire image at once. It works pretty good for this type of TV, but on a modern monitor introduces some problems…which I’ll get to in a bit.

Image from dummies.com. Fitting.

However, this was a problem for me because my new capture card did not accept 240p input. I tried countless times to get it to accept PS1 video, and it just didn’t work. However, I noticed that my PS2 did. That’s because the PS2 outputs by default at 480i, an interlaced mode that my capture card accepted.

So I opted to use my “fat” PS2 instead, which is a SCPH-30001 model, purchased new in 2001. It includes the original PlayStation chip, and – to my enormous surprise – read my original Final Fantasy IX CDs perfectly. Because the PS2 accepts PS1 controllers and PS1 memory cards, it was an almost flawless version of the original PS1 experience. Awesome!

Step 3: Recording

With setup out of the way, I got to the final step of the project: actually recording digital video.

I use Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for all my video and streaming projects. It’s free, powerful, and pretty fast. My capture device was immediately detected by OBS, but there was one immediate problem.

Remember the interlacing I mentioned earlier? When you display interlaced video on a progressive screen – AKA any modern flat-panel monitor – you get a horribly ugly effect where the video seems to be ripping itself apart. This is called combing, and it sucks. Thankfully, OBS supports native deinterlacing, so I was able to fix it right up.

That being said, let’s break down the different parts of recording with OBS:

Resolution: the PS2 outputs in 720x480 pixels, but my videos are at 1920x1080. However, recording at 1080p requires more hardware power, so I get more definition at the expense of less overall quality. I chose instead to record at 720p, which is closer to the PS2’s native resolution and allows me to capture better colors with less blur.

Framerate: this is where things got interesting. I master all of my videos at 60 frames per second. Very, very few PS1/2 games (FFIX included) hit 60fps, because the hardware of the time just wasn’t capable of rendering graphics that fast. However, they do output at a 60 hertz refresh rate, meaning that the image updates 60 times per second even if the console doesn’t actually produce new frames that fast. So if you record at under 60fps, you get noticeable judder in your footage. That being said, 60fps was a requirement.

Encoding: I wanted to get the highest possible quality picture. My computer has a Ryzen 5 1600 processor – a capable mid-range CPU – and is excellent at software video encoding. I used the OBS x264 encoder running at medium quality. Any higher than medium and I started experiencing skipping footage as my CPU went to 100% utilization. I gotta admit, it’s pretty cool hearing my computer fans kick into overdrive as the CPU is pushed to its limits.

Bitrate: I’m recording a lot of footage here, so while I needed high quality, I also have to keep storage limitations in mind. I did some experimenting and decided on a bitrate of 9000kbps, still above YouTube quality while also saving space. This also means that each hour of footage is about 4GB; given that FFIX is about 40 hours long, that means roughly 160GB of footage for the game. Not bad, considering.

Deinterlacing: OBS presents a slew of options for deinterlacing your footage, and the differences can be tough to spot. The only option that gave me zero trouble – no juddering or excessive blur – was Yasif 2x. I also increased the brightness and saturation to make up for some of the analog video deficiencies.

I’ve included sample footage below, along with pictures of my setup. If you’re an aspiring retro YouTuber or streamer, feel free to PM me with any questions. This stuff was kinda intimidating to figure out and I’m happy to help!

Until then, I’ll be in Gaia. Or Terra, once I hit Disc 3.

Jon

Full Setup

Cable Routing Detail

The TV inputs run through this old AV hub I dug up from my teenage bedroom. This lets me run the cables behind my desk to keep things a bit neater. I say a bit because you can still see the cables back there, but that’s showbiz, baby.

Sample Footage

youtube

#ff9 #ffix #final fantasy ix #retro #gaming #ps1 #ps2 #playstation #capture #hauppauge #video #editing #project #documentary #video essay #criticism #games #2000s

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itneedsaying · 5 years

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a complete gif tutorial

hi! so i was requested by @popalice007 to make a tutorial on how to make gifs and i am very happy to oblige! this will cover pretty much everything, from capturing frames to saving the final product. this is just how i personally do it, and there are loads of other ways to gif, and i recommend looking at other gifmakers’ tutorials to get a more well rounded view on how to gif. please continue reading if you are interested, and please like/reblog if you find it useful!

disclaimer this is going to get really wordy as i try to explain where to find things and how to do them and my thought process behind why i do them, but please send me a message/ask if something needs clarified!

also some of the pictures can be viewed in full size by clicking on them!

part 1: required materials and other tips

just another heads up, i have a pc, and while i believe most of this should be the same whether you have a mac or a pc, i could be very wrong as i’m not a computer expert and have never really used anything besides windows.

so the two programs i use are kmplayer and adobe photoshop cs5 portable. kmplayer can be downloaded for free here. i have the 32 bit version for windows, so that is what i’m going to be providing the instructions for, since the 64 bit version seems to be a little different. photoshop is pretty expensive, but thepiratebay has several torrents for it, and other downloads and torrents for it do exist. i downloaded mine quite awhile ago so i don’t remember exactly where and how i did it so it might require some researching. i would just double check the comments and instructions to make sure the download will work. there are also dedicated photoshop tumblrs that will probably have links to downloads.

if you are giffing a scene from a tv show, movie, video, etc, you also need to have the video saved somewhere on your computer/flashdrive/whatever. hd-source is a good source for tv shows, and there are tons of other sources. i download a lot from thepiratebay using a program called utorrent (i just use the free version) but beware because since you are downloading copyrighted materials it isnt legal, and while i have never had a problem, i have heard of people getting warning letters from their internet providers. you can also download youtube videos and videos from other places and there are lots of other ways to get videos that i won’t cover.

no matter where you get your video, you want it to be pretty high quality, since the higher quality the video is, the clearer and nicer the gif will turn out to be. most of the time you want 720p if you can get it. 1080p is nice and if you can get your hands on it without the video size being enormous you can certainly utilize it, but it isn’t a necessity and usually i don’t bother. anything lower than 480p can get to looking pretty grainy especially if you are doing full size 540 px gifs, but if you are giffing something from a convention panel video taken by a phone, for example, you don’t really have an option.

additionally, if you are giffing dialogue, find a script online somewhere or find subtitles. you can transcribe it yourself if you want, but if a character is mumbling or has an accent or something i like to be sure of what they are saying.

and finally, have some patience! a lot of the popular gifmakers have been doing this for years and have streamlined their process so it doesn’t take hours, but as a beginner it takes time to get everything right,so it is totally normal if you get to feeling frustrated.

part 2: capturing the frames

first you will want to have an idea of what scene you would like to gif. before i get started i create a new folder where i want the captured frames to go, and i name it something memorable so i can find it again later. kmplayer does also automatically create a folder called capture that you can use if you want. if you are doing a gifset like this, i would have 8 different folders and gave each of those gifs/scenes their own folders.

however, the example i’m going to be using throughout this tutorial is going to be a dialogue scene, specifically this one here, just because they can get a little more complicated imo (plus i want to show how i use the text tool etc). if i’m giffing a scene where characters are talking, even if the scene is a long one with back and forth dialogue, i usually like to cap it all at once and put it in the same folder, and then i separate it out later in photoshop. you can also plan ahead and put all the different bits in different folders, thats up to you and your personal preference.

next i open up kmplayer. kmplayer likes to update pretty regularly and will let you know when you open it if it wants to update. it doesn’t usually hurt to ignore it if you are in a rush, but i usually let it do its thing and make sure i don’t also download whatever browser service, etc. it also wants to install. sometimes ads show up on the right side, you can close them by hitting the little arrow between the ads and the video screen

to open the video, click on “kmplayer” in the upper left hand corner and then click on “open files”. search for your video file and double click it to open it

kmplayer will then open the video, and if its 720p often i have to make the window smaller because it fill up the entire screen and i need to be able to see other windows besides the video. if i remember correctly when you first download kmplayer it isnt automatically set to keep the aspect ratio the same, so if you need to, hit the f2 key to open the preferences or click the lightning bolt on top next to kmplayer, and then click on preferences. under general and then screen on the sidebar, and then under general again i have my settings like so, and hopefully that resolves that issue if you have it. you might have to reopen the video again for that to kick in but i’m not positive. if it still doesn’t work try to google it. i’ve had the problem a couple times and the answer is out there but i’m no tech pro.

anyway, i then locate the beginning of the scene that i want to gif. you can click around on the bottom along the progress bar, as well as using alt+left or right to jump forward and back a minute, the left or right arrow key to jump 5 seconds, or the f key to go forward a single frame. every frame counts, and it is preferable to have too many frames and have to delete them later than to find out your gif will only be 10 frames long because you started capping in the middle of the scene, or because you stopped capping too early. i typically will watch the clip a few times so that i have a set idea of where i want to start and stop.

once you are paused at the beginning of the scene you want to gif, press ctrl+g to open kmplayer’s frame extraction window. click on the folder icon so that you can locate that empty folder you had made earlier. this is where kmplayer will save the screencaps. i then set my settings to png, continuously, original size, and every frame, like so

now we are ready to start capturing! click start on the frame extraction window, and then click back over to the video (this is why i make the video window smaller, so that i can see the video and the frame extraction window at the same time). once i’m back on the window, i hold down and/or tap the f key. kmplayer will capture the frames as you go along. the audio plays along with it albeit choppily which is why i watch the clip several times beforehand, because it can be hard to follow and is disorienting. you can also click the play and pause button, but, again, the audio tends to play at a different rate and it gets confusing, so for me frame by frame is the way to go. keep tapping f until you get to end of the scene/wherever you want to stop. i keep the folder where the caps go open usually so if i mess up or change my mind on where to start/end, i can delete the whole folder and create a new empty one to start over again. this process takes practice and is often dependent on what you are trying to gif and its not a big deal if you have to try it a couple times to get it right.

once you have reached the end of the scene, click back over to the frame extraction window and click stop. if you are giffing multiple scenes from the same video you can click the folder icon and select a different folder to save frames into and then repeat the process of finding the scene and capping it, or if you want to cap from a different video, you can open a new video and cap from there. then if you are satisfied and have all your caps, you are free to exit out of kmplayer.

part 3: making the gif

now it is time to actually make the gif! go ahead and open photoshop, and if it is your first time you can play around and familiarize yourself with where things are. basic gifs don’t require a lot of the tools that photoshop has, and you can customize some as to what windows and panels are open. below is what my workspace typically looks like so that i can get to certain things quicker, but i will explain as i go along where the controls normally are found in the toolbar. also, if you hover over a control photoshop will tell you what it is and what it does.

to open the frames, go to file, then scripts, then load multiple dicom files. then find your folder of caps, select it, and then click OK to open

be aware that depending on the number of frames in that file and the size of the images it sometimes can take awhile to fully load. once they are loaded, you should be able to see all those screencaps as layers on the right hand side of the screen. if not, go to the top where it says windows and click on layers. i frequently accidentally cap a couple extra frames where the scene shifts and i go ahead and delete those layers by highlighting them (use the shift or ctrl key to highlight several at a time) and then clicking on the trashcan at the bottom of the layers sidepanel.

next we are going to turn these layers into gif frames! i have combined this step into an action that i use to automatically do this for me to save time since i gif on a semi regular basis, but the steps are as follows.

first, make sure the animation bar is open. if it is not then go up to window and click animation, and then it should open at the bottom of the screen. you also have to be in frame animation mode. on the upper right hand corner of that panel is an icon with four lines and and an arrow. click on that and then click on convert to frame animation. then in the same menu click make frames from layers.

this can also sometimes take some time if there are a lot of caps but when its done loading there will be frames in the animation bar. in the animation menu click select all frames. then, underneath any of the frames, there will be an arrow beside where it says 0 sec. click it and change the frame delay. what you set it to can be up to personal preference. i typically set mine to 0.07 or 0.08 which seems a bit slow, but i find when i convert the gif to a smart object (we’ll get to that) that seems to speed it up a little so i’ve just stuck with it. feel free to change the delay if you find later that that is too slow for your taste. also in lower left corner of the animation bar is where you set how many times the gif loops. change it from once to forever. the controls to play the gif are also below the frames.

since i gif a scene like this all in one big long take, it is now time to separate it into separate gifs if need be. if you are making a gifset like this you can skip this part because you most likely capped frames from different scenes and gave them their own folders, so they shouldnt need separating.

sometimes you have to get creative on how you split apart the scene, and there arent really any hard and fast rules. here are some things i like to keep in mind:

the camera angles - this is the most important for me. if the camera goes from showing one character to another, or from one angle to another, i separate those into separate gifs pretty much no matter what.

the length of the gifs - this is dependent on the size you are going to crop to, how much movement the scene has, how much color, etc., but i typically try not to go over 80-100 frames in a 265px width gif. they can be trimmed down later, but if it takes 200 frames for the camera to switch to the other character, don’t make that one gif

the dialogue - if there is a natural break in the dialogue, that is a good place to end a gif. you don’t need 50 frames of no one speaking if you are doing a gifset with dialogue.

how many gifs you are making/size - at some point you have to decide how wide your gifs will be and how many of them. if your gifs will be 268 px wide (2 columns of gifs) then you have to have an even number of gifs, and you will need to separate to account for that

going along with the first tip, i’m going to separate the frames by camera changes. i do this first so that way when i crop the gifs, i get things centered how i like.

you can see here by looking at the thumbnails of the layers what i mean by the camera changing angles.

first, press ctrl+n to open a new blank image. if the preset doesn’t say dicom files, click on that menu and click dicom files, that way the new image will be the same size as the original. hit ok.

next, highlight the layers in the original that are going to be the new gif. hold shift while clicking the first and last layer that you want to be in the new gif to do that. click on them, hold, and drag them over to the new document. they will probably be off center and/or invisible. if the layers are invisible click an empty box next to one of the layers so that an eye appears and the layer shows up. then click the move tool and move the layers around til the fill the document correctly. be sure not to stretch/transform the layers by dragging on the edges and corners. as long as all the layers are still highlighted they should all move at once.

next, scroll to the bottom of the layers and delete the blank layer. then repeat the steps to make frames and set the time delay and there is your new gif!

the layers for that new gif are still in the original document, so go ahead and hit the trashcan to delete them, as well as the now blank frames. continue opening new documents and splitting up the scene until you have a new gif for every camera change. the last gif i leave in the original document. i ended up with 5 camera changes so 6 gifs to start with

at this point i crop each gif. tumblr has a guide for image sizes, and the width is the most important thing to follow there. the height is really up to you. if i’m only doing two or four gifs i tend to make them taller than if i do 8 or 10 gifs just because it looks better to me. i’m going to probably end up with 8 gifs because a couple bits are a little long, so i’m going to go with 268 px as the width and 175px as the height. again, the 268 part is the important part to get right since i’m doing two gifs across. to crop, find the crop tool on the left and set your dimensions at the top. make sure when you enter your dimensions, it is in pixels/px and not inches or centimeters.

click, hold, and drag to stretch to create a shadow for what you cropping. i usually go as big as the edges of the image will allow, and then bring the corners in a tad, since occasionally i get a video that has a black outline and i don’t like to have that in the gif. either hit enter or the checkmark in the upper right corner of the toolbar to crop.

you might have to zoom at this point and resize your window. in the bottom left corner there is a percentage you can change, and now that the gif is cropped it will be small enough that you can set it to 100% if it isn’t that already. continue to crop the remaining gifs to the same size. after this i usually play through each one to make sure i have everything in the frame and roughly centered. if you need to undo, press ctrl+z or ctrl+alt+z and recrop or redo whatever needs redone. there is also a history you can pull up under windows, and you can use that to backtrack multiple steps.

next i figure out if i need to break up any of the gifs because of their length. with a gif this size i can probably get away with having more frames and i can trim them later, but if a gif has more than 100 frames i look and see if i can either trim it down now because there is a lot of frames without talking or movement, or if there is a natural break in dialogue where i can split it into two gifs. there are also times when the gifs are really short that you can sometimes combine with a gif before or after that one. that’s your perogative ultimately and what you think looks good but will fall under the 3mb limit, and takes practice and experience to get an idea if a gif is going to be too large. sometimes i go back and rewatch the scene to figure out where to split things up. i also keep in mind that i want 8 gifs for this scene and right now i have 6, so i need to create 2 more, whether i separate two gifs in half, or separate one gif into three new ones.

ultimately i decided to split my largest gif of 180 frames into 3 gifs because it has quite a bit of dialogue, and the other gifs are either already under 80 frames or can easily have some frames deleted out of it. between using the script, rewatching the scene a few more times, and trying to lipread what the doctor was saying, i decided to separate between frames 65/66 and 120/121 so that way they were roughly the same number of frames. the process to separate them is the same as it was when we had the big original gif. i selected the last frame i wanted to include in the new gif so that way the eye appears next to the corresponding layer in the layer panel, and this is how i know which layers to drag to the new document. for example, in the picture i’m moving frames 1-65 to the new document, so i select frame 65, then find that layer and select all the layers below and including that layer and drag them. then repeat the steps to make the frames, etc.

go ahead and delete the empty frames, as well as any frames on the other gifs you may want to delete to trim them up.

so now we should have all of our gifs laid out! my next step is to sharpen them, and i do this using smart objects, and the steps are as follows. (i also made this into an action.)

first, select all the frames and all the layers in the gif. if you deleted some frames but didn’t delete the corresponding layers, don’t worry about it, it doesn’t matter and doesn’t affect the final product.

next, click on convert to timeline animation. this is in the animation menu where we earlier found convert to frame animation.

then, at the top go to filter and click on convert for smart filters. this creates a smart object and turns all of the frames and layers into just a single layer/object. this allows us to sharpen the whole gif at once instead of having to sharpen each frame one at a time (trust me that takes forever if you don’t have an action or do it this way).

next under filter again, then under sharpen, click on smart sharpen. this brings up a window with a bunch of settings. these are what mine are:

repeat this for every gif. look how much better they look already!

at this point, if you haven’t saved yet, do it now! this is a good time to save and take a break. go to file and then save. the format should be set as photoshop/.psd. i go ahead and rename the files too, for example, dwshades1 and so on. i number them too so i can get the order right when i upload them. with it saved as a psd, you could close out and reopen it later and the layers will all be there.

next is coloring! this is technically optional, but is usually the most fun part of giffing in my opinion, and i tend to find uncolored gifs rather boring and bland. this is where you can do some brightening, color correcting, make gifs black and white, and more! its time to get creative with those adjustments.

as there are so many ways to color things, and whole tutorials dedicated just to coloring, i’m only going to show the basics of where to find the adjustments and some of the different adjustment layers that i use most. my first step always though is to create a group just for the coloring layers. the button to create a group is at the bottom of the layer panel and looks like a folder. the button to the left of that is the one that contains the different adjustments you can make.

the black and white circle contains a list of different adjustments you can make. the two i like to use most are curves and vibrance. curves is really useful to brighten gifs and vibrance obviously adds vibrance. my advice is to just play around with all the settings, and look at coloring tutorials. a lot of gifmakers also have psds that you can download. you can either use them as is to apply to your gifs and credit the maker, or just study what they did and learn from it.

anyway, i went ahead and colored my gifs. here is a before and after look, as well as a list of adjustment layers i added:

in this case the before gif doesn’t look bad, but that isn’t always the case, sometimes they start out super dark and colorless. and i like the tone and colors of the colored gif better (you can see how much i like purples and blues lol). again, all personal preference.

whether you color or not, if you have dialogue in your gifs, the next step is adding it in! if the gif doesn’t have a dialogue or if you don’t want to add text, you can skip this next bit.

first, select the text tool on the left side toolbar, it looks like a T. next i choose my font, font size, and color at the top. here are my settings, the key thing is to make it easy to read.

there are more settings like bold and italics under window and then character. these are my settings.

after these are set, click in roughly the middle of the gif and start typing the text that goes with that gif. i usually start with white for the first person to speak, and then change to yellow for the second person and so on, so that way its clear who is speaking, but that’s up to you. when the text starts to go off the edge of the gif, i hit enter to start the next line until i’m out of text. otherwise photoshop will allow you to type right off the edge of the gif.

a little hard to read, right? that’s why i add stroke, which outlines the text. to do this, make sure the text layer is highlighted, and then click the fx button at the bottom of the layer panel, and then click stroke.

these are the settings i use. usually i only have to change the size from 3 to 1px. hit ok.

so much easier to read! also, double check to make sure that the text layer is above the coloring layers.

next, i want to move the text to where i want. select the move tool on the left, and first move the text layer all the way to the bottom. photoshop has it so that it is kind of magnetized to the edges. i then go back to the character menu and change the baseline shift setting to 5 pt.

however, when you click to a different gif it doesn’t reset back to 0, so manually reset it back to 0 before moving your text layer, then change it to 5 again.

next, to center it on the gif. first select the gif layer, then hold ctrl while you select the text layer. the order is important, if you select the text then the gif, the gif will be moved to center itself around the text. then, with the move tool still selected, click this button on the top tool bar to align horizontal centers.

great! now save your gif again, and repeat all these steps for the text for every gif that you are adding text to. most of the time i type the text on each gif first, and then move the text that way i’m not switching tools a dozen times, but it really doesn’t matter.

your gifs are officially done! time to save them in a format that you can upload to tumblr. go up to file, and click save for web and devices. these are my settings, but you can play around with some of the ones on the upper right side. however, you want to make sure that it is a gif, and that it is set to loop forever. those are circled. hit save, name your gif however you want, and save it somewhere you can find it later. do this for all of your gifs.

the other thing i circled in the document size. tumblr does not allow you to upload images that are above 3mb. if yours is above this, you have a few options to cut down on the size. changing the settings on this window such as going from diffusion to pattern, or reducing the number of colors can change the size, but if you reduce the number of colors, you lose some quality. you can also change your coloring layers around, because making a bright gif with a lot of colors can increase the size. black and white gifs tend to be smaller.

the option i tend to go for if i want to keep the colors and quality, is to reduce the number of frames you have. its a little trickier to do in timeline mode than it is when the frames are all there, but this is how to do it. if your gifs are all under 3mb, you can skip ahead to uploading.

in the timeline animation bar, there are blue rectangularish sliders you can move at the beginning and end, as well as a triangular one that shows where you are within the gif. decide the new place where you want the gif to start and end, and move the rectangle sliders there, like so. one tick over does not equal a frame, so i use the triangle indicator to figure out how many frames over i’m moving.

then in the animation bar menu, click trim document duration to work area. this will set your gif to begin and end where those sliders were. at this point you can try saving again to see if your gif is below 3mb. if so, then save it! if not, continue to move the sliders and trim until your gif is below the limit.

so now all your gifs are saved and ready to be uploaded! upload them like you would any other photo post. i always save as a draft first so i can make sure they upload right and so i can look them over again to be sure they are looping correctly and have no typos. only then do i close out of photoshop. tag with the appropriate edit tags (for example, dwedit for doctor who) or tag popular blogs for maximum exposure, but be aware that only the first 5 tags count and will appear in the tags. post and you are done! congrats!

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