Tantai Jin Apologist

Fandoms: MDZS/The Untamed, SVSSS, ATLA

Links to fics (which obviously don't work at present):
- A Different Host - BrilliantLady
- A Heart Undying - NonsensicalRambling
- A Transmigrator and a Time Traveler Walk Into the Bamboo House - VeryCharismaticDragon
- all to myself - WizardTricks
- blood and seafoam - nex_et_nox
- decay - antebunny
- Dispersing Clouds - dreamingofcake
- First the Colors - Fereael
- I Just Wanna Be Yours (series) - chaoticgoodlawyer
- Joy In the Midst of These Things (series) - Glitterbombshell
- Lessons relearned - Iamnotawriter
- No New Age (series) - everythingispoetry
- prophets on hold - nex_et_nox
- Stepping Up - Tossawary
- Stunted Starving Juvenility - Tomatenmark
- The Dragon-King's Temple - Kryal
- The Fire Lapping Up the Creek - notevenyou
- the kite string and the anchor rope - fleurdeliser
- The Story of El-ahrairah and the Rabbits of Cloud Recesses zylaa 
- The Trial of Shen Qingqiu (Could Only End One Way) - deathbycoldopen
- There's more room to grow (series) - tawaen
- Time, Time, Time - skeletonofaplant
- To Change the Wind - Xejis
- we're starting at the end (series) - Miss_Enthusiasimal
- What’s Wrong With Shen Qingqiu? - CherriChou
- With Surgical Precision - metisket
- Worry Me Not - CherriChou

( covers )

Also shout out to Samsara: Mai's Long Day [ATLA] by Loopy, which had a cover already, & The One-Body Problem [MDZS/The Untamed] by metisket, where I adapted an existing cover made for the podfic version.

I did square album cover versions of each one, even if there isn't an already existing podfic, so if anyone is using the Ao3 downtime to make podfics of any of these (*hint hint*), I have a cover ready to go. I went back & forth on whether to include the author names while also leaving options open for podficcers as I was making these. With some I included the author’s name, some I left space for the podficcer to decide, some there was no space while allowing for readable text anyway so it’s title only. Consistency, what’s that?

( podfic covers )

Naturally I did covers for my own fics. They've been added to their respective posts, but I'll post them all here for convenience's sake.

( covers - mine )

( podfic covers - mine )

I've limited the width of most of these so as to not bork up my layout. For full size, right click & copy the link into a new tab, or go to the Tumblr posts. Favourite fics covers post: here (podfics). My fics covers: here (podfics). Podfic covers are in the reblogs of each post as Tumblr has a post limit.

( activation code: dumbfuck author, dumbfuck novel )

And the Raccun chibis:

( the system provides comprehensive 24-hour support & a user-friendly online service )

I've limited the width of most of these so as to not bork up my layout. For full size, right click & copy the link into a new tab, or go to the Tumblr post here.

Next post will be some miscellaneous extra illustrations.

( satisfaction points +500 )

I've limited the width of most of these so as to not bork up my layout. For full size, right click & copy the link into a new tab, or go to the Tumblr post here.

This time, it's Kira Freije - Unspeak the Chorus.

Return to a listening day

( unspeak the chorus )

This isn't all of them. There were so many sculptures in this exhibit. I even managed to miss a few, if the brochure was any indication, probably because I must have looked past them amidst the atmospheric lighting & mirrored walls. And I still came out with a lot of photos. So I've settled for just a few of the ones I found most interesting.

That's the last of them, as the fourth finalist, Simeon Barclay, was nominated for The Ruin, a spoken word poetry piece. There's a video playing on a screen to give people something to look at, but it's not all that visually interesting (& as it's a bright screen in a dark room lit by red lights, the photos I did take look shit). There's some scaffolding surrounding it, but, well, it's scaffolding.

So, update.

I finished the transparent PNGs I'd been working on. I did all the character designs from the back of the 7seas books, & most of the illustrations (basically if there was a clear enough outline of a character or characters without stuff in the way, I did it). I also did illustrations from the Russian translation, though not as many as I'd have liked, as there were some that were only available as a poorly-taken photo b someone using their phone where they couldn't even keep the whole image in shot. A bunch of the Russian chibi illustrations were already in transparent form, & a few others hat were in decent quality proved trickier to do than I'd like, but I did do one, of my boy Xiang Fei. There were also some promotional/merch illustrations that I found (I basically went browsing the wiki & snagged any official art that looked suitable). As for MDZS, I didn't do any illustrations from the books aside from the few I'd needed for the fanfic covers, because the art style wasn't suited for cutting out. I did find some promo/merch stuff to do though. MDZS is way better served with transparent images anyway, so I don't feel the need to force myself.

I was going to start posting them, but then I went to the Turner Prize exhibition & took loads of photos that I want to share. There are too many transparents to go in one Tumblr post (I believe the max is 30), so I'd need to pace them out (not too close together that it felt like flooding the tags, but not too far apart that I get sidetracked in between), & since the art photos will also need to be spread over multiple posts, I would probably get thrown off whatever schedule I set myself for posting them. Yeah, you can cue posts on Tumblr, but I'd still have to manually post them here on DW, with Tumblr used to host the images, & variations on formatting necessary for the different platforms, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So the transparents will hopefully start getting posted in a few days. In the meantime I've been organising the downloaded fics (both mine & others'), splicing together series into one fic (I tend to read them all together so why pretend otherwise), & tweaking metadata. This step has been more involved than expected (bit of a theme with this whole thing) as I've found myself doing plenty of editing to the works themselves. Not the actual stories, obviously, but downloaded epub versions of Ao3 fics display a little weirdly. You've got a random page with a the title in text & a bunch of tags, then you go to the next section & only then do you get the proper title & author & what the story is about. It's weird. Also I got sick of accidentally opening a tag when tapping to open the settings/navigation & it decided I'd tapped too close to a link. So I've been editing each fic in Sigil/Page Edit & stripping out the links. And in order to make this easier on myself, I've removed some entirely because they're not relevant to me (I'm not using them to search & filter, & I don't require warnings - I just want a quick rundown to remind me which fic it is that I'm considering reading, alongside the summary). I also moved the proper title & author, as well as the summary, to the top of the tags page (left the link to the original fic in place though), & moved any relevant pre-fic notes just below the tags, so it's all in the same section & in the right order, & then delete the original summary page. So, one section for the title, summary, tags, & notes, & then into the fic. I also went through the fics & added horizontal lines between any chapter notes & the chapter itself, & deleted a lot of chapter notes that are not useful ('sorry for the late update!' or 'i went back & edited a mistake in a previous chapter' are pointless when the fic has been completed for 5 years). In the case of my fics, I went & deleted a bunch of such no-longer-relevant notes from the actual posted fics themselves, because I can. Also, some notes the author seems to be arguing with dumbasses with zero literacy., & I'm not one of them, so it's just annoying. Also content warnings just feel condescending most of the time. Oh, really? Bad Stuff happens in a fanfic based on The Book Where Bad Stuff Happens? You don't say.

Another thing that happens with epub downloads of Ao3 fics is that it keeps all the original tags as metadata tags. I want to be able to organise & filter by tags, but Ao3 tags are not quite what I need as a system just for browsing epubs. These are all fics I know & like enough to have downloaded. I don't need to filter out tropes & genres I despise, I don't need warnings, & I don't want to deal with 50 tags that all basically mean the same thing (eg. an SVSSS System reveal, a MDZS Golden Core reveal, & secret identity reveal, are all basically the same trope with a different hat). Also one of my primary motivations in picking a fic to read is length (do I want something of epic length to get lost in? do I have not have the time to spare to risk getting lost in a story, so just want something short that scratches an itch? something in between?). And there's no way of seeing that at a glance in an ereader without opening each one & checking, so I needed a way to categorise by length.

So I've been working out my own little tagging system, very broad & simplified (too many tags for too specific things means I'll just forget most of them & the whole system will fall apart).

Next up is to find a good ereader app to read them on my phone. I usually just use Google Play Books to read my epubs, as it's already on there & works fine. But I want to keep fanfic separate, & would like something with a tagging system. I've seen Moon Reader recommended, so I'll give that a shot.

Progress so far:
- Make the last few covers/banners for my fics.
- Finish the transparent PNGs
- Post the transparent PNGs I've been working on.
- Make a fic rec post. I've been meaning to do that for a while, but this is a neat excuse. I can rec my faves while offering the covers to anyone else that wants to use them.
- Splice together series fics into a single fic & tweak any metadata for the epub files.
- Add the fics to an ereader app.

Playing the Myst remake after playing Horizon Forbidden West has me going 'Damn, I could get some sweet gear for this much brimshine!'

( mysterious )

Myst Remake
Main island

( colourless )

Horizon Forbidden West (PS5)
Abusing the black & white filter.

( scenic )

Horizon Forbidden West (PS5)
Miscellaneous scenery screenshots.