When I Tell You I Snorted!

I've got like four or five things that I actually like, and I just stick to those.

Meet My Ship Template

Another little something from yours truly- this time we're getting to know your ships 💗 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.

💾 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: 

ao3 summary box:

me:

ao3 summary box: 

me:

pcgamer

23-year-old D&D RPG Neverwinter Nights just got a new update thanks to the 'unpaid software engineers' of its unkillable community

It's always a good time to play NWN.

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 scene⁠—if 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 “WE’RE FRIENDS OF DOROTHY”??????

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 Shepard’s 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 “E as in Eeyore” i am on my hands and knees wailing screaming crying pleading and begging people to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet

“I’m scared to pirate stuff - ” do it scared!*

*with Firefox and Adblock and a VPN and -

If you want a nonspecific, nonexhaustive “where do I even start” guide…

Sail the cyber seas at your own risk!

Streaming - “I want to watch xyz”

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 it’s 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? Here’s a guide!

Back to streaming -

Make sure that a) you’ve got your Mozilla browser with all its adblocking private glory, and b) you’ve got a VPN turned on to hide what you’re 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 they’re talked about widely enough. (Remember how tiktok idiots got zlibrary taken down?)

You’re going to have to talk to people on forums. You’re going to have to experiment with sites you find yourself. Search for ‘x online free’ 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, you’ll develop a good gut feeling and understanding of what a good site ‘looks like’ from the results page alone.

However, there are some places that compile good sites that haven’t 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 this…) isn’t 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 aren’t 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 can’t tell that you’re visiting an unofficial streaming service.

Note: In my experience, I’ve 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 you’re using Firefox and uBlock, you shouldn’t be in any danger of an accidental redirect.

Downloads - “I want to keep xyz”

This is the realm of pirate archiving - you’re 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 don’t know if there’s a difference in quality or more danger in clicking the download buttons, but regardless -

Run that puppy through VirusTotal.com! It’s 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 ‘xyz Google doc’ search for others :]

Torrents - “I want to keep and share xyz”

I’m not going to go into this subject in depth because, honestly, it’s 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 (I’ve personally only used qBittorrent - I’ve heard to stay away from the Pirate Bay and Bittorrent.)

As with streaming, turn on that VPN baby! You’re going to need one that supports peer-to-peer (p2p) connections, so Proton’s free version is a no-go. Windscribe is what I’ve used for torrenting (and it’s a good free VPN on its own - I’m just partial to Proton). You get 10GB every month on Windscribe’s 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 it’s 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 ‘healthy’ seed tends to have lots of seeders and few leeches, but sometimes you’re 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 it’s just the only program I’m 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. It’s 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 that’s about it. Feel free to correct me if anything I’ve recommended is malicious or outright wrong. I’ve been doing this for years and haven’t 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 ‘don’t pirate small author’s or artist’s works what the fuck dude’ 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 haven’t gotten to just yet? Any recommendations from ones you’ve 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 👀 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!