When I tell you I snorted!
I've got like four or five things that I actually like, and I just stick to those.
Another little something from yours truly- this time we're getting to know your ships đ Veilguard themed but again, you could probably use it for any DA ships I'm not the boss of you.
I tried to make this as easy as possible to follow, but I've once again gone overboard, so if anything is confusing please feel free to reach out.
đž download (ko-fi, always free!) Included in the download is a blank PNG and a PSD file- if you want to use the PSD but don't have Photoshop, Photopea is free and works just as well!
Font Used: Astoria Roman DATV Extracts by @pinkyjulien
me: *writes fic*
me: great! time to post to ao3-
ao3 summary box: *exists*
me:Â
ao3 summary box:
me:
ao3 summary box:Â
me:
Article: '23-year-old D&D RPG Neverwinter Nights just got a new update thanks to the 'unpaid software engineers' of its unkillable community'
Excerpt:
"I am an absolute freak for BioWare's 2002 D&D RPG Neverwinter Nights, and somehow this unkillable game just keeps chugging along: Beamdog just put out a new, official update for its 2018 enhanced edition re-release that was assembled by members of Neverwinter Nights' still-active mod sceneâ âif that sounds familiar to you, this isn't the first community update that's been officially christened by Beamdog."
[source]
THE WIGGLES JUST RELEASED A SONG CALLED âWEâRE FRIENDS OF DOROTHYâ??????
Chapters: 2/36 Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Kal'Reegar/Female Shepard (Mass Effect), Female Shepard & Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Female Shepard & Garrus Vakarian, Kal'Reegar & Tali'Zorah nar Rayya Characters: Custom Shepard, Kal'Reegar (Mass Effect), Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, Garrus Vakarian, Normandy Crew (Mass Effect) Additional Tags: Dual POV, Canon Divergence, Dialogue Heavy, Friends to Lovers, horny to friends to lovers, Literal Sleeping Together, Sharing a Bed, vision angst, Reanimation Angst, Angst, descriptions of violence, Canon Typical Violence, Gore, Horror aspects, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Getting Together, Explicit Sex, No Shepard Without Vakarian, earthborn/war hero, No beta we die like Nihlus, no formal beta at least, do not copy to another site, I MEAN THE ANGST, shepard cannot catch a break, which is kinda the point Series: Part 1 of The Kal Project, Part 1 of Jenn Shepard Summary:
When Shepard recruits Tali, she also takes on the other survivor of the quarian team. This spurs Kal to join Shepardâs crew in the fight against the Collectors. Along the way, both him and Shepard develop a relationship deeper than lust and learn to grow.
just overheard my wife spelling something on the phone and i shit you not saying the words âE as in Eeyoreâ i am on my hands and knees wailing screaming crying pleading and begging people to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet
âIâm scared to pirate stuff - â do it scared!*
*with Firefox and Adblock and a VPN and -
If you want a nonspecific, nonexhaustive âwhere do I even startâ guideâŚ
Streaming - âI want to watch xyzâ
This is normally what most people want when they talk about pirating.
Use Firefox with uBlock Origin and additional privacy add-ons such as PrivacyBadger, TrackMeNot, etc.
Free VPNs are out there. Get one - but vet itâs efficacy. My go-tos are Proton VPN, or Windscribe if you plan to do a bit of torrenting.
What is torrenting? How does it work? Hereâs a guide!
Back to streaming -
Make sure that a) youâve got your Mozilla browser with all its adblocking private glory, and b) youâve got a VPN turned on to hide what youâre doing in that browser from your ISP (internet service provider).
Now you need to actually find a site to stream from. This is the tricky part, because openly sharing these sites will get them taken down if theyâre talked about widely enough. (Remember how tiktok idiots got zlibrary taken down?)
Youâre going to have to talk to people on forums. Youâre going to have to experiment with sites you find yourself. Search for âx online freeâ and look at the links that come up - is the preview text mangled or clickbaitey? Are there Reddit threads about that website confirming or denying its content? A good rule of thumb is to ignore the top result or two - copycats of good streaming sites will often buy out the top result spot. Eventually, youâll develop a good gut feeling and understanding of what a good site âlooks likeâ from the results page alone.
However, there are some places that compile good sites that havenât been nuked by lawyers (yet) - check out r/FMHY! The masterposts are actively curated and updated when a site goes down or is found to have malicious downloads.
Remember - loose lips sink ships. No tweeting (xeeting?) or Facebook statuses about your new favorite piracy website and where you found it. Even posting to tumblr (kind of like thisâŚ) isnât a great idea if you want those websites to stay under the radar and stay accessible. Nobody talks, everybody walks (away with their share of pirate booty)
If you arenât downloading media, pick pretty much any site and watch away! Adblock and Firefox will keep away pop-ups and other annoying ads, and your VPN means your ISP canât tell that youâre visiting an unofficial streaming service.
Note: In my experience, Iâve never heard of visiting a site and watching stuff on it infecting or otherwise compromising your computer. That tends to come from misclicks on invisible or overwhelming pop-up ads that redirect you to an automatic download or similarly malicious bullshit. If youâre using Firefox and uBlock, you shouldnât be in any danger of an accidental redirect.
Downloads - âI want to keep xyzâ
This is the realm of pirate archiving - youâre keeping files physically on your hard drive, an external hard drive, or burning a disk.
Adblock + Firefox browser? Check. VPN on? Check.
Go to your streaming site of choice - most if not all have download options. You can download those files or, manually, right click and save the video file from the webpage as an mp4. I honestly donât know if thereâs a difference in quality or more danger in clicking the download buttons, but regardless -
Run that puppy through VirusTotal.com! Itâs a reliable browser based virus checker - if the file is too large, use a local virus checking program (your native Windows Defender on Windows computers or, I prefer, Malwarebytes)
Generally mp4 and mp3 files are clean - choose where to save them for the long term, and bam! Free forever media.
Optionally, I also upload mp4 files to a named Google document - this way I can easily share them or make them findable through a âxyz Google docâ search for others :]
Torrents - âI want to keep and share xyzâ
Iâm not going to go into this subject in depth because, honestly, itâs not something I do regularly.
See the previously linked Torrenting guide for information on how the process works, and check out r/FMHY for recommendations and warnings about different torrenting clients (Iâve personally only used qBittorrent - Iâve heard to stay away from the Pirate Bay and Bittorrent.)
As with streaming, turn on that VPN baby! Youâre going to need one that supports peer-to-peer (p2p) connections, so Protonâs free version is a no-go. Windscribe is what Iâve used for torrenting (and itâs a good free VPN on its own - Iâm just partial to Proton). You get 10GB every month on Windscribeâs free version, which is more than enough for a few movies/a season or two of your favorite show.
(Bigger torrents like video games are easily 30+ GB, so be prepared to either pay for a no-limit premium account or spend a few months downloading your files in chunks.)
VPN on? Double check.
Boot up your torrenting client - I use a slightly out of date version of qBittorent, but there are other options. The Reddit thread and previously linked torrenting guide have a few dos and donts of selecting a client, so be thorough before you download your client of choice.
This is getting into the logistics of torrenting a bit, so forgive me if this is vague or incorrect, but now you need a torrent seed. These will be .tor files found through pirating websites or archives - these are rarely malicious, but itâs good to run any piracy related download through something like VirusTotal.com or scan it with a local program like Malwarebytes.
You open your seed file in your client and wait. A âhealthyâ seed tends to have lots of seeders and few leeches, but sometimes youâre stuck with an obscure seed you just have to wait for.
Your torrented files have fully downloaded! Now what? a) keep your client open and seed those files for others as long as you want to - sharing is caring! and b) run those files through a security program like Malwarebytes (not sponsored itâs just the only program Iâm familiar with).
Be wary of what gets flagged - sometimes the files seem important, but are just trojans, and likewise sometimes they seem malicious, but are just cracked software getting flagged by your system. Itâs good to check and see if others have had a problem with this particular torrent before - Reddit threads from 2008 are your long dead friends.
And thatâs about it. Feel free to correct me if anything Iâve recommended is malicious or outright wrong. Iâve been doing this for years and havenât had an active problem to my knowledge, so if there is something fishy with how I do things, I am a statistical outlier and should not be counted.
I wish you smooth sailing and strong winds in your ventures me hearties!
Obligatory âdonât pirate small authorâs or artistâs works what the fuck dudeâ statement.
got an ask recently about the way my digital art looks like traditional, so I tried to explain the steps on my self portrait, feat. some of my favorite artists and favorite brushes. sorry if it's incoherent, I'm not used to explaining my process besides "I've been professionally studying traditional art for half my life and I'm really bad at technology so I just paint digitally the way I do on paper"
If you enjoy reading, are there any books on your reading list that you would like to read but havenât gotten to just yet? Any recommendations from ones youâve read?
I'm actually reading books on writing right now! FIGHT WRITE: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes by Carla Hoch
I really want to learn how to write action scenes, since there are some future chapters and one-offs I would like to have realistic fighting in it.
I used to do a lot of action writing in my early days -- when I was participating in a BLEACH RPG on forums and LJ, but it's been a long ass time. I'd love to create tension through motion-- and be able to actually help @thedissonantverses for the story we're cooking up. Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan Just to help me write more descriptively. I don't wanna be someone who uses purple prose for everything, but I could think a little harder about what the world reminds me of. Even the simplest actions have a rich story behind it. I'd like to know how to bring that out.
How To Write Erotica by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Because...reasons đ I don't want that cottage to be quiet forever.
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As far as books on the list, the main one is 'How We Heal' by Prentiss Hemphill!