#should i create a tag for this version of them considering that i will definitely create more content of it in the future?

[brotherconstant]

GIFMAKING TUTORIAL: PHOTOPEA (for Windows)

Screencapping

Gif Width/Size Limit/Ezgif

Loading Frames

Cropping and Resizing

Rasterize/Make Frames

Sharpening

Coloring (not detailed. Links to other tutorials included)

Exporting

Obligatory Mentions: @photopeablr ; @miwtual ; @benoitblanc ; @ashleysolsen Definitely check out these blogs for tips, tutorials and resources, they're a gold mine. Finally I recommend browsing the PHOTOPEA TUTORIAL / PHOTOPEA TUTORIAL GIF tags. DISCLAIMER: English is not my first language and I'm not an expert on what I'm going to discuss, so if anything's unclear feel free to drop another ask.

1. SCREENCAPPING -> PotPlayer (the one I use) or MVP or KMPlayer

INSTALL PotPlayer (tutorial)

Play your movie/episode and press Ctrl + G. The Consecutive Image Capturer window will pop up. Click Start to capture consecutive frames, Stop when you got what you needed.

Where it says "Image Type -> Format" I recommend picking PNG, for higher quality screencaps.

To access the folder where the screencaps are stored, type %appdata% in windows search, open the PotPlayerMini64 folder (or 32, depending on your system) and then the Capture folder. That's where you'll find your screencaps.

Admittedly MVP is a lot faster but I prefer Potplayer because it generates (at least in my case) higher quality screencaps. MVP kind of alters the hue and it made it harder for me to color my gifs. Still, if you're interested in how to use it, I recommend this tutorial.

As for KMPlayer, every tutorial out there is outdated and I couldn't figure out the new version of the software.

2. GIF WIDTH/HEIGHT, SIZE LIMIT, EZGIF OPTMIZER

At this point you should already know how big your gifs are going to be. Remember the ideal gif width(s) on tumblr are 540 px / 268 px / 177 px. These specific numbers take into account the 4 px space between the gifs. No restrictions on height. Here are some examples:

You can play around with the height (177x400, 177x540, 268x200, 268x268, 268x350, 268x400, 540x440, 540x500, 540x540 etc) but if you go over the 10 MB limit you'll either have to make your gifs smaller/delete some frames.

OR you can go on ezgif and optimize your gif, which is usually what I do. The quality might suffer a little, but I'm not really (that) obsessed with how crispy my gifs look, or I'd download photoshop.

Depending on the gif size, you can decrease the compression level. I've never had to go over 35. It's better to start at 5 (minimum) and then go from there until you reach your desired ( <10mb) gif size. Now that I think about it I should have included this passage at the end of the tutorial, I guess I'll just mention it again.

3. LOAD YOUR FRAMES

File -> Open... -> Pick one of your screencaps. The first one, the last one, a random one. Doesn't matter. That's your Background.

File -> Open & Place -> Select all the frames (including the one you already loaded in the previous passage) you need for your gif and load them.

(I recommend creating a specific folder for the screencaps of each gif you're going to make.)

WARNING: When you Place your screencaps make sure the Crop tool is NOT selected, especially if you've already used it and the width/height values have been entered. It will mess things up - I don't know why, could be a bug.

You can either select them all with Ctrl+A or with the method I explained in the ask: "when you want to select more than one frame or all frames at once select the first one, then scroll to the bottom and, while pressing Shift, select the last one. this way ALL your frames will be selected".

WARNING: Depending on how fast your computer is / on your RAM, this process may take a while. My old computer was old and slow af, while my new one can load even a 100 frames relatively fast, all things considered. Even so, I recommend ALWAYS saving your work before loading new frames for a new gif, because photopea might crash unexpectedly. Just save your work as often as you can, even while coloring or before exporting. Trust me, I speak from experience.

Now you can go ahead and delete the Background at the bottom, you won't need it anymore.

4. CROPPING AND RESIZING

Right now your screencaps are still smart objects. Before rasterizing and converting to frames, you need to crop your gif.

Technically you can rasterize/convert to frames and then crop, BUT if you do it in that order photopea will automatically delete the cropped pixels, even if you don't select the "Delete Cropped Pixels" Option. Might be another bug, unclear. Basically, if you crop your gif and then realize you cropped a little too much to the left or the right, you can go ahead, select the Move Tool (shortcut: V) and, after selecting ALL YOUR FRAMES, move them around on your canvas until you are satisfied. You won't be able to do this if you rasterize first and then crop, the excess pixels will be deleted. I don't know why, I found out by accident lol.

CROPPING

(Cropped pixels: the gray/opaque area outside of the selected area. That area disappears once you press enter and crop, but the pixels are retained, so you can move the frames around and reposition them as you like. In this case I could move the frames to the left and include Silver's figure [curly guy in the foreground] in the crop)

After deleting the Background, you will need to select all your frames (using the Shift key), use the C shortcut on your keyboard to choose the Crop tool. Or you can click on it, whatever's more convenient. Once you do that, a dropdown menu is going to appear. You need to select the "FIXED SIZE" option, as shown in the following screencap.

Once you do that, you can type in your desired width and height. Do not immediately press enter.

Your work area should now look like this. Now you can click on one of the white squares and enlarge the selected area until the edges are lined up. You can then move it around until it covers the area you wish to gif.

WARNING: to move the big rectangle around, you're gonna have to click on a random point of the work area, PREFERABLY not to close to the rectangle itself, or you might accidentally rotate it.

See? When your cursor is close to the selected area it turns into this rotating tool. Move it away until it reverts to your usual cursor, then you can start moving the rectangle. Press Enter when you're satisfied with the area you selected.

RESIZE

This isn't always necessary (pretty much never in my case) - and it's a passage I often forget myself - but it's mentioned in most of the tutorials I came across over the years, so I'd be remiss if I didn't include it in mine. After cropping, you'll want to resize your image.

IMAGE -> Image Size...

This window will pop up. Now, should the values in the Width and Height space be anything other than 540 and 400 (or the values you entered yourself, whatever they might be) you need to correct that. They've always been correct in my case, but again. Had to mention it.

5. RASTERIZE & MAKE FRAMES

Now that your screencaps are cropped, you can go ahead and convert them.

LAYER -> Rasterize (if you skip this passage you won't be able to Sharpen (or use any filter) on your frames at once. You'll have to Sharpen your frames one by one.

Photopea doesn't feature a timeline and it's not a video editor, which makes this passage crucial. When you select all your smart objects and try to apply a filter, the filter will only by applied to ONE frame. Once you rasterize your smart objects and make them into frames, you can select them all and sharpen them at once. Unfortunately this also means that you won't be able to - I don't know how to explain this properly so bear with me - use all smart filters/use them in the same way a photoshop user can. For example, you can sharpen / remove noise / add noise / unsharp mask... but you can't act on those filters in the same way a photoshop user can. When you work on smart objects you can change the blend mode - which is critical if you decide to use a filter like High Pass. If you simply apply a high pass filter on photopea you won't be able to change the blend mode and your gif will look like this (following screencaps). Or rather, you will be able to change the blend mode by clicking on the little wheel next to "High pass" (circled in green in the 2nd screencap), but you'll have to apply the filter to each frame manually, one by one.

Then you can rasterize/make into frames, but it's extremely time consuming. I did it once or twice when I first started making gifs and it got old pretty soon haha.

Layer -> Animation -> Make frames. This passage will add "_a_" at the beginning of all your frames and it's what allows you to make a (moving) gif. As I said in the ask, if you skip this passage your gif will not move.

6. SHARPENING

Some people prefer to color first and sharpen later, but I found that sharpening filters (more or less) dramatically alter the aspect of your gif and already brighten it a bit (depending on your settings) and you may end up with an excessively bright gif.

Now, sharpening settings are not necessarily set in stone. The most popular ones are 500/0.4 + 10/10, which I use sometimes. But you may also need to take into account the quality of the files you're working with + the specific tv show you're giffing. I've been using different settings for pretty much every tv show I gif, especially in the last couple months. Some examples:

followed by

OR

AMOUNT: 500% RADIUS 0.3px followed by AMOUNT: 20% (or 10%) RADIUS 10px

You'll just need to experiment and see what works best for your gifs.

Some gifmakers use the UNSHARP MASK filter as well (I think it's pretty popular among photopea users?) but it makes my gifs look extra grainy, makes the borders look super bright and it clashes with my coloring method(s), so I use it rarely and with very moderate settings. Something like this:

Again, depends on the gif and on what you like. I've seen it used with great results by other gifmakers!

REDUCE NOISE

Sometimes - and this is especially the case for dark scenes - your gif may look excessively grainy, depending on how bright you want to make it. Reducing noise can help. Keep it mind, it can also make it worse and mess up the quality. BUT it also reduces the size of your gif. Obviously, the higher the settings, the more quality will suffer.

These are my standard settings (either 2/70% or 2/80%). It's almost imperceptible, but it helps with some of the trickier scenes.

ADDING NOISE

Adding noise (1% or 2% max) can sometimes help with quality (or make it worse, just like reduce noise) but it will make your gif so so so much bigger, and occasionally damage the frames, which means you won't be able to load your gif on tumblr, so I rarely use it.

You'll also want to create ACTIONS which will allow you to sharpen your gifs much faster.

HOW TO CREATE AN ACTION ON PHOTOPEA

The Action Button (shaped like a Play button as you can see in the following screencaps) may not be there if you're using photopea for the first time. If that's the case click on the magnifiying glass next to "Account" (in red) and type "actions". Press Enter and the button should immediately show up.

Once you do that, click on the Folder (circled in yellow)

and rename it however you like.

now click on New Action (circled in red). now you can press the Recording button (circled in green)

Now

FILTERS -> Smart Sharpen

and you can enter your values. Then you repeat this passage (WITHOUT pressing rec, WITHOUT pressing new action or anything else, you just open the smart shapen window again) and, if you want, you can sharpen your gif some more (10%, 10px, or anything you want.)

Maybe, before creating an action, experiment with the settings first and see what works best.

When you're satisfied, you can PRESS STOP (it's the rec button, which is now a square) and you can DOWNLOAD your action (downwards facing arrow, the last button next to the bin. Sorry, forgot to circle it) .

You need to download your action and then upload it on your photopea. When you do, a window will pop up and photopea will ask you whether you wish to load the action every time you open the program. You choose "Okay" and the action will be loaded in the storage.

When you want to sharpen your gif, you select all your frames, then you click on the Play button, and select the Action, NOT the folder, or it won't work.

Actions can also be created to more rapidly crop and convert your frames, but it doesn't always work on photopea (for me at least). The process is exactly the same, except once you start recording you 1) crop your gif as explained in step 4, 2) convert into frames. Then you stop the recording and download the action and upload it. This won't work for the Rasterize step by the way. Just the Animation -> Make Frame step.

7. COLORING

Now you can color your gif. I won't include a coloring tutorial simply because I use a different method for every tv show I gif for. You normally want to begin with a brightness or a curve layer, but sometimes I start with a Channel Mixer layer to immediately get rid of yellow/green filters (there's a tutorial for this particular tool which you will find in the list I mention in the link below)

[Plus I'm not really an authority on this matter as my method is generally... fuck around and find out. Two years of coloring and I still have no idea what I'm doing. 70% of the time.]

Simple Gif Coloring for Beginners -> very detailed + it includes a pretty handy list of tutorials at the bottom.

8. EXPORTING

Now you can export your gif. Some gifmakers export their (sharpened) gifs BEFORE coloring and then load the gifs on photopea to color them. I'm not sure it makes any difference.

FILE -> EXPORT AS -> GIF

(not colored, just sharpened)

As you can see, unlike photoshop the exporting settings are pretty thread bare. The only option available is dither - it sometimes help with color banding - which, and I'm quoting from google for maximum clarity:

"refers to the method of simulating colors not available in the color display system of your computer. A higher dithering percentage creates the appearance of more colors and more detail in an image, but can also increase the file size."

SPEED

When you export your gif, it will play at a very decreased speed (100%). I usually set it at 180/190%, but as for every other tool, you might want to play around a little bit.

GIF SIZE/EZGIF OPTIMIZER (See Step 2)

And that's it.

P.S.: worth repeating

Save your work as often as you can, even while coloring or before exporting.

#photopea #my inbox is open if you have any questions <3 #image heavy under the cut #photopeablr #tutorials #gif tutorial #allresources #photopea tutorial #completeresources #gifmaking

[marvelouslizzie]

unconventional methods - chapter 2

Summary: Bucky Barnes struggles with his feelings towards Bunny, leading him to make a big mistake. Now he must make it right. It means doing something he is uncomfortable with.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader (SHIELD Agent Bucky Barnes x Adult Content Creator Reader)

Word Count: 6.7K

Warnings: 18+ NSFW MINORS DNI, texting, overthinking, self-doubt, misunderstandings, pet names, video call, mutual masturbation, slight dirty talk if you squint, metal arm use, use of a dildo, teasing, small dose of sub/dom dynamic, no mention of y/n.

A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who showed interest in the first chapter. I really didn't expect this story to get the attention it did. Means a lot to me. If you didn't read the first chapter, you definitely should before reading this one.

unconventional methods - chapter 1

marvelous lizzie's masterlist

This story will end with chapter three, which will most likely come out the following Sunday (12th March)

Once again >> indicates incoming messages and <<; indicates outgoing messages.

Once again a big thank you to @notafunkiller and @es1dit for everything. Extra thanks to @notafunkiller for the beta-read and for helping me to improve the story. You two are the best!

All work is mine, please do not repost or translate without my permission.

Every like, comment and reblog is highly appreciated. Don’t hesitate to message me or send me a question or comment regarding the stories I write. I would love to talk about it and no, it would never bother me as long as it’s not a hate comment. They are never welcome.

Read more tag starts after the first paragraph of the story.

Gifs belong to @fysebastianstan I wanted to add them through Tumblr gifs but couldn't find them that way. I hope it's alright to use them and if not, I can remove them if requested.

<<< Previous Chapter

After that magical night, Bucky found himself overthinking again. He was definitely struggling with the feelings he had for her. They were sexual, but that was not all. He had been in only sexual relationships before the war. It was like an agreement: purely sexual and for fun. Some girls wanted a bit more experience before finding the love of their lives, and it was totally fine, but this… this definitely wasn’t the same. He was feeling possessive over her and the feeling was so strange, especially considering they did not even meet face to face.

Of course, he knew he wasn’t the only person she was sharing this side of herself with. Posting adult content was literally her job. There was no doubt other men would like to get closer to her and she would probably talk to them a little, see how she feels and if things fall into place, they would get to see this side of her and she would get aroused just for them. A rare sight. Anybody would be lucky to witness that. 

He still couldn’t believe she was into him. It was probably more of the idea of him, not the real him since she didn’t know who he actually is, right? He knew his dick wasn’t a disappointment, his body was fine, but definitely could be better. There was always space for improvement. She did not see the metal arm or his face. She only heard his voice, saw some parts of his body, and created a different version of Bucky. Not even Bucky, James. Some 33-year-old dude named James who was partially good-looking. In her mind, he must be someone else, completely different from reality.

That was what she should be for him too, right? Some random super attractive girl on the internet who was willing to talk to him? Nothing more. Yet he couldn’t force himself to feel nothing but sexual attraction toward her. He tried to focus on work, but he couldn’t. Mission reports were always boring anyway. How were they supposed to distract him? 

>> Hey handsome, I hope you’re having a good day.

Her texting him doesn’t help, either. It’s just making it harder for him to stay away. He needed to distance himself, get a new perspective and maybe, maybe have a chance to realize he was being ridiculous. But she was so hard to resist her, especially when she was just wishing him a good day like this, with no expectation or pressure.

<< Hey, Bunny. It’s boring, but I’ll survive. I hope you are having a good day.

>> Oh, I’m having a great day. Especially after last night…

Bucky closed his eyes and took a deep breath when he read the message. He just wished she wouldn’t bring it up. It was great, he can’t deny it, but he knew… he fucking knew it was nothing special for her, and remembering that just broke his heart a little more. She shouldn’t have to act like it meant something to her. The idea of her faking something was just unbearable.

<< You know you don’t have to…

>> I don’t have to what?

<< I’m grateful that you made me feel special. It felt great, but I know I’m not special or anything and you don’t have to act like I am. It’s fine. 

Her responses came in so quickly, he had a bit of a hard time following them.

>> What the fuck, James?

>> What the actual fuck?

>> Do you think I am doing this with everyone?

>> Is that how low you think of me?

>> You think I open my messages, talk to the ones that seem okay, and send them special photos in my spare time?

>> Why would I fucking do that? What am I gaining? Loyal followers? More paying customers? People don’t wanna pay shit for things they can get for free. I know that better than anyone. It’s my job!

>> You think I pick the ones that are good-looking, and just have fun? If that were the case you wouldn’t even have a chance! Do you know why? You don’t even have a profile picture! I didn’t even know your name for days! I don’t even know if you are single or married or divorced!

>> If you think I’m treating loyal customers like this or something you are wrong. God, I feel so stupid because I thought you were different. Why would you be any different than the others? Just because you respected my boundaries, just because you didn’t ask for private photos, and just because you reminded me of those gentlemen from 40s movies, it doesn’t mean you are not after the same thing they are.

>> You have no idea what I am risking just by talking with you. God, I’m so stupid. 

>> You got what you want and now you are done with the small talk. I get it. I’m backing off. Sorry for disturbing you.

<< Bunny, bunny, bunny!

<< No, please, stop! That’s not what I meant.

<< Please, give me a chance to explain myself. 

<< Please.

<< That’s not what this was, believe me.

>> Explain what? How this is nothing special for you? It was just a bit of fun time with the girl you were following online? I don’t want to hear it.

>> You don’t have to explain anything to me. You don’t owe me an explanation, I’m just a random girl who shares adult content. Obviously, I have no soul or feelings. 

<< I’m the one who has feelings for you, okay?! I didn’t think you would find me interesting or special because I don’t feel like I am. 

<< I am sorry. I think I was just projecting. That’s what my therapist would say.

<< I just didn’t wanna make you uncomfortable with my feelings. I thought they would be totally unrequited.

>>  You have feelings for me?

>>  You better not be lying to get out of trouble, James! 

<< I’m not, I swear. Just give me a chance, okay?

>> Fine. You get one chance. Tonight. You explain yourself on a video call or I’m not talking to you anymore.

<< Whatever you want, doll. Whatever you want. Just don’t step out of my life. 

***

The day did not seem to pass fast enough. It felt like time was standing still just to torture Bucky more. The work was much more boring than usual: a lot of paperwork, signatures, and chasing the right people. Not that he was chasing anyone. He was sitting and pitying himself while waiting for Natasha to show up. He just wanted to get up and leave, but apparently, it wasn’t possible. When Natasha finally stepped inside, Bucky groaned out of frustration.

“Oh, fucking finally, Romanoff.”

Natasha didn’t even look at him.

“I was busy. What do you need?”

“A couple of signatures.” She leaned in and started to sign the papers as quickly as possible. She was never reading what she was signing because who had time to read a 25-page-long mission report? Apparently, Bucky Barnes because he had to write it from the scratch. Like his day wasn’t horrible enough... “I wish we could just go on missions, and that would be it.”

“Oh, that’s the dream, Barnes. That’s the dream.” She finally put her pen down. “I’ve been writing the mission reports for months. It’s your turn now, stop complaining.”

“I know, I know.” He accepted the defeat much easier than he normally would.

“Are you alright?”

Bucky looked up at her from his seat. Was he alright? Definitely not. He could feel a heavy knot inside his chest, burning his lungs and stomach while he was waiting for tonight. Of course, he wasn’t going to say that to Romanoff.

“I’m fine.”

“Doesn’t look like you are. Whatever it is, stop overthinking.”

“Easier said than done,” he murmured. 

“Look, I know it’s not an on-off switch, but you gotta try a little bit harder. Shift your focus on something else or just face whatever makes you this… uneasy.”

“I’m gonna face it. Shifting my focus is not helping.”

Natasha gave him a suspicious look. She had no idea what this was about, but she had a feeling it might be because of the pretty girl she suggested to him. Or was it just wishful thinking? No, wishful thinking wasn’t something she did often. She was always a big realist and something was definitely up with Barnes.

“Good.” She simply answered. She knew him well enough to guess pressuring him to talk wouldn’t work on him. “We have a meeting tomorrow.”

Bucky groaned in frustration because he was just done with the mission report and now SHIELD was ready to send them in another mission again.

“We need a break.”

“This one is pretty urgent. Apparently, it’s been an undercover operation for a while now and they finally got the info they need. We’ll need to leave right after the meeting.”

“An undercover operation, huh? Interesting.”

“Be here at 9. Fury wants us all present, it’s really important.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll be there.”

***

Bucky had no idea when the video call was gonna happen, but he was already feeling too self-conscious. His face was known to most people all over the world since he was accused of killing the king of Wakanda. Then working for SHIELD became a big deal. He wasn’t sure how Bunny would react when she realized he was the Winter Soldier. He wasn’t ready for that.

>> Are you there? I’m available for that video chat.

<< I am.

>> OK. I’m calling you.

He quickly turned his laptop on, hoping he would keep the camera off for the conversation. Maybe just hearing his voice would be enough for her.

“James?” Her voice was so soft and silky. Hearing her saying his name like that made him shiver a little.

“Yes, doll?”

“Why is your camera off?” Of course, she wasn’t gonna let it go. What was he even thinking?

“I am not…” He actually didn’t know what to say. “I don’t feel comfortable…”

“You don’t feel comfortable with me? Is that what you’re saying?” She definitely sounded offended.

“No, it’s not like that. I don't feel comfortable... and you might not feel comfortable either."

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain.” He was hoping she would just let it go.

“Try me.” She didn’t.

“Please, doll… Let’s just talk.” He was practically begging at this point.

“Jamie, if you don’t turn the camera on, I’m leaving. We can’t continue like this.” She sounded so determined, it was scary. And her calling him Jamie? A part of him melted. He had noticed how her calling him Jamie influenced him in this way. Maybe because his mom called him Jamie when he was little. Bucky came later when he was a teenager. Before that, he was Jamie at home.

“Don’t. Please, don’t.”

“Don’t what? Call you Jamie?” The defensive tone of her voice was breaking his heart.

“Don’t leave.” He quickly turned the camera on, afraid she might just leave. Then he heard her gasp. Fuck, she’s scared, he thought. “I told you it might be uncomfortable.”

She quickly pulled herself together.

“Yeah, it’s so uncomfortable looking at that pretty face.” She managed to say, trying to hide her surprise. “Or those blue eyes. Do you ever look in the mirror Bu-bunny?”

“Bunny?” He repeated confused. “You are the bunny, not me, doll.” 

“If you say so.” She shrugged, licking her lips nervously. “I can’t believe you have been hiding this face all this time.” she tried to focus on him. “Why did you even think I would be uncomfortable?”

“Don’t you know… who I am?” he sounded nervous again, thinking he might have to explain his past. It’s always tedious. How can you say you were a brainwashed assassin in a less threatening way? You can’t. That was the problem. 

“I know you were the Winter Soldier if that’s what you are asking.” 

Oh.

“That explains the reaction.”

“No, it was because of your pretty face. Not because of your past. I’m in no position to judge you for your past. Whatever you did, you had no control over it. That’s pretty obvious.”

“How can you be so sure?” His question came instantly.

“Maybe I can tell you how and why one day, but not today.” She sounded a bit uncomfortable, so Bucky didn’t want to push her.

“Whenever you want, Bunny. I will always be here to listen.”

“Can I see your arm?” The change of topic came too suddenly. Her question caught Bucky off guard.

“Huh?” 

“Your metal arm. It’s vibranium, right?” She was talking about the arm he has been trying to hide so hard. Does she really want to see that arm? 

“Yes, it is.” He tried to sound as normal as possible.

“Can I see it?” She repeated eagerly.

Without saying anything, Bucky curled up his sleeve to reveal a part of his arm, still feeling a bit uncomfortable.

“Wow.” She looked stunned. “It looks… so pretty. The gold details. Wow.”

Her expression was something that can’t be faked. She was so genuinely surprised and interested. It gave Bucky the confidence he needed.

“Wanna see the rest?”

Bunny nodded excitedly, making Bucky smile. He took his henley off pretty quickly, and his metal arm, broad chest, and dog tags were on full display.

“Now I know why you only had one arm in every picture you sent me. Smart move, Sergeant Barnes.” Her eyes were still on his body, focusing on his arm. Bucky couldn’t remember the last time he felt this desired. Oh, god she definitely knows who I am, he thought. Getting called by his rank did things to him. He could feel the blood rushing to the other places. It’s not the time, it’s not the time, he tried to remind himself, yet a low groan escaped his lips before he could control it.

“So am I gonna see the rest, Sergeant?”

He gave her a confused look. When he asked that question he meant the rest of his arm, but apparently Bunny had different ideas. 

“You mean…”

“The rest of your body, yes.”

“I thought we were gonna talk.” He tried to hide how much he was actually enjoying this change.

“We were, but I changed my mind.” Bucky smiled once again. Maybe I still got it, he thought.

“Because of the arm?”

“Because of you and yes, the arm too since it’s a part of you.” 

“I never thought…” He couldn’t get to finish that thought.

“Your arm would be a turn-on? Well, it is. You should get used to that.”

“That’s gonna take a while,” Bucky admitted, then he looked back at the screen. “You gotta share more to see more, Bunny.”

“You are a fast learner, Sergeant. I like that.”

“I told you, you can always count on that.”

Bunny took her shirt off, instead of answering him. Bucky’s expression changed pretty quickly when he noticed she had no bra on. God, he needed to touch her, feel her and make her feel good, but he has no idea if that was even possible. His eyes focused on her nipples. How could they look this delicious over a video call? He wanted to latch on them, suck until she was a crying mess under him. 

“You okay, Sarge?”

“God, Bunny, if you call me Sarge or Sergeant one more time, I will come inside my pants.”

“Noted,” she said with a teasing voice. “We wouldn’t want that, would we? I wanna see you first. Then we can make that happen.”

“I wanna see you, too. Coming hard while I tell you dirty things that turn you on.”

“Wow, the old man has a dirty mouth. Who would’ve thought?”

“Are you teasing me?” He asked with a small smile on his lips.

“I am challenging you.” Bucky gave her a suspicious look.

“To do what?”

“To talk dirty for real, James. You are ‘all talk and no action’ sometimes.”

“Oh, is that what we are doing now?” He already sounded challenged by her words. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t like a gentleman.”

“I do like a gentleman, outside the bed. In the bed, they are boring.”

“Okay, okay.” He nodded, trying to decide what to do next. “Good to know. Now, take your clothes off. I wanna see that body.” 

“Is that an order, Sarge?”

“Yes, it is, Bunny.”

“And what if I don’t follow it?” Her voice was so fucking cute, Bucky did not know how she managed to be like this. 

“Then you will be punished accordingly.” He didn’t even think before answering.

“Over the phone?”

“No. I will punish you in person. I will find wherever you live and I will punish you for not following a clear order.” The words spilled out of his mouth without much thought. The second he was done, he realized what he said. God, if she had got scared, she would have had every right to do so.

“That sounds more like a promise.” Her answer was unexpected and didn’t seem wary. Was she not scared of him? At all?

“It can be, but you wouldn’t wanna get punished.” 

“Hmm…” She thought for a second. “Tell me, what do you want? A good girl or a bad one?”

“I want you, Bunny. Whichever you are.” His answer must be unexpected because Bunny’s expression changed for a second. She looked emotional and vulnerable, but she quickly pulled herself together.

“I am a little bit of both.” 

“Then both it is.”

Bunny quickly took her remaining clothes off instead of responding, giving him a look. “Your turn.”

Bucky did the same.

“Now what do you want me to do?” She asked eagerly.

“Touch yourself for me.” She could feel how aroused he was just by hearing his voice. The full view of his erection was helping, too. 

“Touch yourself first.” She sounded so demanding and Bucky couldn’t find the strength to refuse. His flesh hand wrapped around his already painful erection. “With the metal one, Sarge.”

Bucky quickly looked back at her, with confusion written all over his face.

“I promise, I am not a groupie or anything. I just think it would look so hot.”

“A groupie?”

“Google it if you don’t know what it means. I am not gonna embarrass myself by explaining.” Bucky laughed a little.

“I know what it means, Bunny. I just wasn’t sure why I would think you're a groupie.”

“Oh…” She looked at the camera for a second. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” He was completely lost.

“That you have fans.”

The look he had was unforgettable: completely lost.

“I have fans?” He repeated mindlessly.

“Nobody told you that, huh?”

“Nope. I have fans?”

“You do.” Bunny giggled. He was really an adorable old man. “People who defend you online. I will explain more later, okay?”

“Okay.” He still sounded confused, but he let it go. The sight in front of him was more interesting than a group of people defending him. 

“Metal hand, around your cock.” She reminded him.

“Right.” She watched him wrap his vibranium fingers around his erection. It was truly a sight.

“Now, your turn.” 

“What do you want me to do?” She quickly asked.

“Do you have a dildo around?”

Bunny was silent for a second. “Yes?” Her tone was hesitant.

“Do you have a favorite?”

She tried not to smile. “Of course.”

“Take that one.” He sounded so confident. It was a huge turn-on. 

“Wait a second.” She left the frame for a while, and Bucky could hear her walking around, looking through her stuff. Finally, she came back with it. 

“You like it big,” Bucky stated after seeing the dildo. It was probably as big as his own dick. No wonder she was so into the pictures he sent.

“Is that a problem?” Her question was genuine. “I can get a smaller one.”

“Why would I want that?” He had no idea. “I want you to enjoy this. That’s why I asked for your favorite.”

Bunny’s concern vanished quickly.

“Now what, Sarge?”

“Now we both start to play with ourselves.”

“Sounds good.” Bucky watched her brushing her fingers against her clit while letting out delicious, low moans. It was nothing too pornographic, and he could feel more blood rushing to his lower side. He started to work on himself pretty slowly with his vibranium hand since it was new to him. He never used his metal fingers before so he was trying to be careful. 

“Use lube.”

“Huh?” Bucky looked like a fish out of water.

“Use lube, it will make it better.” Her fingers were still working on her clit and lips as she spoke. “Or whatever you have. A cream works too, I guess.” 

“I have lube, doll. How do you think my dick survived you for this long?”

She giggled again, and all Bucky wanted to do was kiss her hard. Her lips, her nipples, her wet pussy. Anything… he just needed to taste her. 

“You don’t even need lube, do you?” he asked, trying to distract himself.

“Nope.” She moved her finger away from her pussy, just to show him how wet she is, and the response she got was a loud moan.

“Fuck.” He took a deep breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” It was such a raw reaction, and Bunny loved every second of it. “All for me?” 

“All for you, Sarge.”

His fingers started to work faster, and thanks to the lube, it was much better than he expected. He was surprised at how the metal felt against his cock. Definitely didn’t feel like flesh, but it was good. Really good since he could actually move his metal hand faster.

“Can I put this in me?” She asked Bucky for permission to finally use the dildo, and god, he had to stop for a second, not to come instantly. 

“Yes. Yes, you can.” He breathed out, struggling to form sentences at this point, but he managed it.

She pushed the dildo inside her effortlessly and let out a loud moan as she moved it in further. Bucky took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. There is no way you are not gonna come before her. He was talking to himself. Just calm down. 

"Ride that dildo, Bunny. Imagine it's me."

“You want this to be over soon, huh?” Her teasing tone helped him relax. He liked that he wasn’t alone in this.

“You gotta meet me in the middle, Bunny. Otherwise, it’s gonna be embarrassing.”

She didn’t tease or challenge him this time. She just listened to his order and started to ride the dildo as she would ride him. Her movements, the noises she made… She was making things even harder. He felt like he lost control of his fingers. He wanted to slow down, try to come with her, but his metal hand wasn’t listening to him.

“F-fuck.” He breathed out. “I’m- I’m gonna come.” He sounded so pained like he was disappointing her.

“I’m gonna come, too.” Her response was quick. “Sstop holding yourself back.” She was panting, involuntarily showing him how close she actually was.

“Shit. Pinch your nipple for me if you like that.” His metal hand was moving fast on his cock, it was oozing with precum already. 

“I do.” She was out of breath already. “I do.” Pinching her nipple was enough to push her over the edge. “Oh, fuck…” When the first wave of her orgasm hit her, he could see how strong it was. “Fuck, Bucky…” The moment she said his name, he knew he was gone. There was no way he could hold back. “This feels so good. So fucking good.”

“God, Bunny.” He let out a loud moan as his come hit the laptop screen. He gasped as he continued to move his hand until he felt painfully overstimulated.

He had no idea how long the silence between them lasted.

“James?” He heard her silky voice before opening his eyes back up.

“I’m here, Bunny.” She smiled in response. She could see he was still there, but she wasn’t gonna say that.

“That was amazing.” Bunny looked so blissed out.

“Tell me about it.” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe how strong that orgasm was.

He heard Bunny taking another deep breath while looking back at him.

“Look, I know this is not the time…” Bunny sounded more serious than before. The tone got his attention back to her. 

“Tell me.” He suddenly sounded so demanding.

“The timing is horrible.” 

“I don’t care.” He smiled, trying to assure her.

“I won’t be around for a while.” His face dropped when he heard her words. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you tonight. I won’t be online or posting new content.”

"Is something wrong?" He sounded so worried, so panicked. As crazy as it might have been, he didn't want to lose her, especially after this.

“No, no, no.” She quickly assured him. “It's something I have to do. I was working on something for a long time and now it might come to an end. Which is a good thing since that's what I was trying to achieve. I just need to deal with it, then I will be back and I'll explain everything, okay?” Bucky nodded. “Just know that I'll be busy, but I'll come back, okay? No need to worry about me.”

“I will always worry about you.” That was the truth. Even if he knew she was fine, not hearing from her would worry him. “Thank you for telling me.”

***

The next morning, Bucky woke up feeling much better than he ever felt since he was a free man. Last night, things exceeded his expectations. He noticed how much he was overthinking everything, how he never thought she'd be so okay with who he was. He never thought she would be still attracted to him after seeing him. He wasn’t delusional enough to think he had an ugly face. The problem was the things that face was associated with and, yes, he was still convinced she was way out of his league. But she didn’t seem to care, and that was all that mattered to him. 

He quickly got ready. His morning routine was simple, so he could just leave in half an hour: a quick shower, a simple breakfast, and putting on appropriate clothes were enough. After he was done with the essentials, he found a bit of time to send Bunny a good morning message. She might not be able to respond, since she told him she was gonna be busy these days, but he still felt like doing it. And after last night, he had no intention to refrain from following his wishes. Not anymore.

But when he opened the app, he was simply shocked, horrified even… Because Bunny was gone. Completely gone. Her account was deactivated, and only their old messages were still there.

The panic scattered throughout his body like rapid fire, spreading from his chest and burning everything on its path. He had no idea what to do. He didn't have her number or any social media accounts if she had any. He didn’t even know where she lived. Yes, sure, Bunny told him she was going to be away for a while and wouldn't be able to share anything, but deleting her whole account? That was completely unexpected and alarming. He rubbed his face with both of his hands, trying to figure out a way to make sure she was fine.

Slowly, the overthinking returned and took complete control of him. What if she just played it cool yesterday but wanted to vanish after learning who he actually was? The Winter Soldier was a terrifying figure, he would have not blamed her if that had been the case, yet he would have felt betrayed and disappointed. He tried to think of a moment or a small detail that showed she was just trying to act her way out of a dangerous situation, but nothing came to his mind. She was surprised, of course, but after that initial shock, she was back to her normal self. She even wanted to see him more intimately. Was it because she didn’t feel safe anymore? Could she possibly act so flawlessly and show no fear while trying to get away? A part of him didn't believe that couldn’t be true. She was one of the most authentic people he met, even though they did not actually meet in person. That was why he was pulled towards her this much. Another part of him thought this is basically her job. She had to look convincing enough, but looking and acting were completely two different things, and Bucky wasn’t sure of anything anymore. He was so focused on trying to find a logical explanation for everything that he almost didn't hear his phone ring. 

When Bucky grabbed back his phone, he saw the name Sam Wilson on the screen. He didn’t feel like answering, but Sam was stubborn as usual. He called him back again in a second, and Bucky had no choice but to answer at the end.

“Hey, Buck. You ready buddy? I’m on my way and I can give you a lift.”

Bucky made an unintelligible sound, not knowing how to answer. He already forgot about the meeting and the time.

“Please, tell me you are ready. The meeting is in half an hour.”

“I am.” He finally managed to say something back. His own voice sounded robotic and the words were forced, but he had to go through this day to find a way to reach Bunny. Maybe he could ask for Fury’s help to locate her. It would take a lot of convincing, but he would do it for her. To make sure she was safe and sound. To do that, he had to go to this briefing. 

“Okay, I’ll be there in 5.”

***

As Bucky and Sam finally arrived at the SHIELD headquarters, Bucky muttered a simple thank you. They didn't talk much during the ride, which wasn’t unusual, yet Sam suspected something was wrong. Bucky was usually calm and collected. He wouldn't engage in small talk or chat about random topics, but this time he seemed nervous. Sam wanted to ask what was wrong, but after all the time they spent together, he knew it was better to just wait for a sign. That was always more effective. Bucky would recoil into his shell like a freaking turtle if you made a move too soon, and that was the last thing they needed.

As for Bucky, he couldn't stop wondering about all the possibilities in the world and what he should do next. He would have to talk to Fury privately, ask for help, and get out of this mission. After that, he would go on whatever mission they decided to throw his way. No problem. None at all. Just let me be sure she is fine.

While still thinking about the plan in his mind, Bucky found an empty spot in the meeting room and sank down. He was checking his phone regularly to see if there was anything from Bunny or if maybe her profile would be back up, but no. There was nothing at all, and his worry was growing every second. He had no idea how he was supposed to go through this meeting at all.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to end one of the biggest undercover operations in the history of SHIELD.” Fury’s voice got the attention of everyone in the room. “We are going to hit HYDRA where it hurts the most. Innocents will be saved by cutting HYDRA’s biggest financial income. It doesn't get any better than this.” Fury talking about HYDRA got Bucky out of his own head for a second. “This operation has been going on for quite some time and there’s no one better than Agent Elvisa to explain the details before we get to action.” Fury turned his eyes to the side, moving his hand up to introduce the mysterious agent. What Bucky didn't expect was to see Bunny, in flesh and blood, right in front of him. She was wearing a generic SHIELD uniform, her hair neatly tied up in a ponytail, looking composed.

“Thank you, Director Fury.” Hearing her silky voice made Bucky realize he wasn’t dreaming. His eyes widened when he realized he was really standing there, looking perfect in that ugly outfit. He could feel a hole forming in his stomach while Agent Elvisa started to explain the details. She was actively trying to avoid meeting his eyes while talking, showing some statistics and the essential, but Bucky couldn’t hear anything. His ears were ringing.

Since Bunny kept avoiding the eye contact with him, Bucky’s glance turned over to Natasha. She was the one who suggested her, after all. Did she know about this? The woman who he thought was a complete stranger was actually a SHIELD agent. There was no way Natasha did not know this. Was this all an elaborate prank? Maybe orchestrated by Natasha. That would make perfect sense.

Bucky understood that HYDRA was making a lot of money from their human trafficking network, and SHIELD was about to destroy it. He would have loved to focus more on the details since this would have been a personal case for him in another context. He was one of their victims after all. Yet his palms were sweating as he thought about confronting her. Even when he tried hard to understand, his brain didn’t compute any of the information she was giving. It was too loud, too uncomfortable. He felt thirsty and nauseous at the same time.

After the meeting was over, Bucky jolted out of his seat to catch her. He needed a second to talk to her, privately, to understand what the fuck was going on. He thought he deserved that much explanation before going on another mission after everything that happened between them. 

She was talking to someone, but Bucky didn’t pay attention to their conversation. He stopped right next to her, invading all of her personal space without considering how it might look from the outside.

“We need to talk.” His voice was so harsh, it made her flinch. She looked up and met his eyes for the first time, and he could clearly see she was uncomfortable. 

“She was…” The man she was talking to tried to interject, but Bucky was having none of it.

“I’m talking to Agent Elvisa.” God, the way he said her name was stone-cold. It sounded like he wanted to spit her name out. He subtly grabbed her arm. “We need to talk. Right now.”

***

Bucky’s hand didn’t leave her arm until they were tucked inside the closest empty office. He was trying to control himself, but it was so hard when a million questions were running through his head. Yet, he managed to choose one to ask.

“Why?” His eyes were like two daggers.

“Why what?” She managed to say back, a little terrified.

“Why did you do this to me?” The way Bucky asked the question broke her heart. She could hear the disappointment, the pain and betrayal in his voice. “I just need to know why you did this to me.”

“What are you talking about? What did I do to you?” She looked completely clueless, and it hurt Bucky even more. “Look I know…” She tried to explain, but he didn’t let her.

“Was this a joke? Did Natasha put you up to this?” He talked so fast and harshly. “Or was this a bet between co-workers?” She was silent. Completely silent. Trying to understand what he was talking about.

“You think I played with you?” She asked the question like she couldn’t believe him. 

“Didn’t you, Agent Elvisa?” Again, her code name sounded so harsh on his lips. She wasn’t Bunny anymore.

“Playing with you was never my intention.”

“But you did it anyway.” God, he sounded so broken, on the verge of a breakdown.

“I didn’t even know I was talking to you until last night, Bucky.” She was getting emotional, but Bucky wasn’t in the state to notice it. “I could never…”

“You could never what? Make a fool of me? Break my heart? What did you think would happen when you decided to show up and give a presentation in that freaking room?” He raised his hand to point toward the general direction of the meeting room.

“I didn’t know you would be here!” She finally snapped and started to yell back. “I didn’t know I was talking to you until last night! Did you even listen to me back there?”

Bucky looked all lost, trying to understand why that would matter right now.

“I was on an undercover mission all this time. It had nothing to do with you! You think I made a fake account and started creating content just to mess with you? Why would I do that?”

“I… I don’t know.” He didn’t know anything. All he came up with was a list of possibilities.

“I have been doing this for months! I’m trying to catch those bastards, trying to look convincing enough and make them pay for what they did!” She stopped for a second, trying to collect herself. She didn’t want to cry. Not right then. “You think you are so important that I would create a whole ass account instead of just coming and asking you out?”

Her question silenced him for a second, making him wonder what the last sentence meant.

“What did you just say?” 

Right at that moment, someone knocked on the door and stuck their head inside.

“Sergeant Barnes, we have to leave in 10 minutes.”

He didn’t even look their way. “I’m in the middle of something!” It was so harsh yet attractive.

“I know, but Director Fury…”

“Just tell him I need 5 more minutes.” The determination in his tone shook the agent and he left without saying anything in return. As soon as Bucky heard the door close, he repeated his question.

“What did you just say?”

“I don’t know what kind of sick game is going on, but I’m assuming you know I have a crush on you. Maybe Nat told you. I.. don’t know, but I would never do something like this. Not to you, not to anyone. I’d just ask you out and get rejected with pride.”

“You had a crush on me?” He couldn’t believe what she was saying.

“You… didn’t know?”

“No.” They both looked so confused.

“I assumed that you did.” She awkwardly looked around.

“Nope.”

The door was opened without a knock this time and both of them turned their heads simultaneously.

“Buck-” Sam couldn’t even finish his sentence. The double death glare startled him.

“For god's sake! I just need 5 minutes of privacy before I go there and fight. Is that too much to ask?” 

“Okay, man, calm down. I’ll tell Fury.” He quickly looked at Bunny and then at Bucky before closing the door behind him. Both Bucky and Bunny turned their eyes to each other.

“Okay, look… I didn’t play with you.” She started to explain. “No one put me up on a mission to mess with you. I don’t know if this is a twisted game of fate or something else, but I didn’t know you would be involved in this operation, okay?”

“It’s Romanoff’s doing.” He finally put two plus two together, and she nodded slowly. It made sense to her, too. Then they heard Fury talking outside, and they knew that the time was running out.

“We don’t have time for this.” She stated while running her hand through her hair. “Just know that I was going to explain everything after the operation. That’s why I said what I said yesterday.”

Before he could answer her, the door opened once again. No knocking, no hesitation. Bucky was about to yell at them not to interrupt once again, but Fury was standing on the door sill, looking uneasy.

“Barnes, we have no time for…” His eyes darted between both of them. “...whatever this is. We have to leave before it’s too late.”

“Fine.” He finally responded after a short while. “I’m coming, but this conversation is not over, Agent Elvisa.”

“I’ll be waiting, Sergeant Barnes.”

Next Chapter >>>

***

taglist (I tried to tag everyone who showed interest in chapter two. If you would rather not be included please let me know.)

@geminiflanagansblog @sadg1rlsei @lia-winther @nanikio @barnesboo1967 @chinaza444 @kaitlin013106 @ryanmxrie @steverogers-wife @weaselbeedisneygeek @tilltheendofthelinepal9950 @happyxdayxbitch @marvelogic @wintasssoldier @buckybarnessimpp @marvelsbitchh @alright-i-guesss @almosttoopizza @rabbitrabbit12321 @cookielovesbook-akie  @whalien52bbgrl @cjand10 @scifinerd1818 @dellalyra @capswife @netherqueen23 @beware-my-thorns @freegardenbanananeck @iamstevessmile @raven1234321 @divadinag @noisesinthedark @amanda-says @ozwriterchick @sleyeveryday @arsonfrogger @lfaewrites @alana4610 @amberpanda99 @splendidreads @acatwriteshere

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes imagine #marvel x reader #sebastian stan #marvel fanfiction #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes x yn #bucky x female yn #winter soldier #bucky barnes fluff #bucky x you #my stories #unconventional methods

[accessibleaesthetics]

wrt copying an image description someone else wrote in a reblog, is that... okay? should I credit the person? the only reason I haven't been doing that is I'm not sure what the "code of conduct" for that is, like, whether it would be considered rude to copy & paste someone else's description. sorry if this seems silly im just very autistic and need to understand what's considered best practice w this

Thank you for asking this, because I promise you are not the only one confused about it. It's not a silly question at all.

On Tumblr, copy/pasting another person's words into a separate post without credit, even the original post of the thread, is generally considered rude in almost all cases, especially if you don't give credit. Image descriptions are the exception.

This is because unlike other types of content, it's not really about authorship so much as it is about getting the information itself to as many people as possible. And since the original post is the one that shows up in the tags and search results, putting that description in the original post usually creates a waterfall effect (more people see the accessible version in the tags/search, more people reblog that version, more people see the reblogs of that version and continue to reblog that version, etc.).

While I can't definitively speak for every image describer on this website, I can say that I have never met one who would be offended by you taking their ID and putting it in the original post. I can confidently say the vast majority of image describers would actually be thrilled about this, and would not be concerned about credit at all.

Now, if you would like to give credit, you still can! Some people do— I've seen some end an ID they add to their post with (written by [username]), maybe even @ mentioning them. This is by no means a faux pas, but it's extra.

So next time you have someone add a description to your work, feel free to credit them or messgage them with a thank you or reblog it—all of that is okay. But the most important thing is to add it to the original post. That's what most image describers really want.

You can also take IDs from other reblogs and put it in your reblog if you are not the OP, but still don't want to reblog from the person who described the image. It's perfectly fine!

[itsclydebitches]

Haha, I explicitly don't tag my rwby critique posts as RWDE because I know people will just block or insult me without even reading what I wrote

Honestly? Valid choice. I've gone on record about my own choice to tag for both "RWBY" and "RWDE," but to be frank I think "RWDE" is a borderline useless tag. RWDE folks have never agreed on what should go in there. Non-RWDE folks have definitely never agreed on what should go in there. It was created as an absurd way to divide the fandom between (incredibly subjective) Good Content and Bad Content, with the result that this actively undermines the purpose of posting on tumblr: for new people to see your stuff. Most of us recently saw that post with someone understandably asking what in the world RWDE was... as well as some of the top answers that provided an incredibly biased, borderline lying definition. Unlike something like "RWBY Critical" that both tells newcomers what it is and does so in a neutral way (these are posts that are critical of RWBY and the tag itself gives no indication as to whether that's a good or bad thing), "RWDE" is nonsensical to anyone not already in the know and is a RWBY-fied version of a very negative word: "rude." Despite most of us embracing that, it's still a tag designed to turn newcomers off.

So how is anyone supposed to find like-minded community members when our main tag doesn't follow any other tagging conventions, is framed as a negative from the get-go, and polite questions are immediately met with the more intense fans painting the worst picture possible? That was always the point. RWDE isn't "We just want you to have your own space where we don't have to engage" it's "We want to make this as difficult as possible so eventually you'll just leave." So... yeah. I use it because I know it will hit an already established core group actively looking for the kind of content I write, but I 100% understand you and others going, "Why would I use that? The fandom has been trained to block on sight. That's not going to help other people see my work on the Let Other People See My Work site."

I think I've said this before, but I want to do a version of those wine social experiments. You know the ones where they take super duper cheap wine, stick a fancy label on it, tell people it's the Most Expensive Vintage Ever, and watch them wax poetic on how absolutely stunning the taste is? Give RWBY fans a post without tags/blog name (or, to follow the pattern, with misleading tags/blog names), watch as many people agree with the points made -- or at least consider them seriously -- and then go, "Aha! This was a RWDE post all along!" Like any fandom under the sun you'll never have people agreeing on criticism and there will always be individuals who can't stand a word said against the show... but I guarantee if you removed the bias associated with RWDE you'd get a lot more fans who are RWDE.

Also, side-note, gotta love that I make a post talking about how fans are too inclined to attack critics than engage with what they're saying or simply ignore their stuff... and what's at the top of my inbox but someone calling me a piece of shit and accusing me of stuff I've never ever done (harassing the creators, misusing Monty's name -- the usual accusations that, as I said, fans pick up and repeat ad nauseam without thinking through whether they're accurate).

Me: Hey, don't send people insults, baseless accusations, and death threats because you disagree over the quality of a show

Anons: [Immediately send insults, baseless accusations, and death threats for the sin of telling them not to do that]

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

[suchamiracle-does-exist]

Dear @faisonsunreve thanks for the tag. This was definitely a time taking task but so much fun to do. A true time travel to your watching history. To my surprise there are three French films and three Tom Hanks films included. 😄

A few comments about certain choices.

Favorite film of all time: The Thief of Bagdad (1940): The jewel of the film is Conrad Veidt’s insane Jaffar dressed up with the turban.

Best script: Some Like It Hot (1959): The story about two antihero musicians trying to make a living and avoiding gangsters by dressing as women and joining a female band and traveling to Miami is still unique to watch.

Favorite poster: The Empire Strikes Back (1980): Memories from the childhood. Darth Vader’s perhaps a little too epic posture promises you an emotional adventure and that promise will be fulfilled.

"I’ll watch it some day": Napoléon (1927): @missholson and I were introduced to this 6-hour biopic of Napoleon and we were stunned by the shots of the twenty-minute triptych sequence, where widescreen panorama is made by projecting multiple-image montages simultaneously on three screens. Blu-ray is waiting on the shelf.

Big personal impact: Elvis (2022): I wasn’t prepared for the narrative where female gaze and male vulnerability are allowed and validated.

You like, but everyone hates: Angels & Demons (2009): Don’t know today’s reception but when it was released the film was heavily criticized by the critics and the audience. I like both this and The Da Vinci Code (2006), but having more convincing characters, plot and hold for the entirety makes it better than the first one.

Underrated: The Ninth Gate (1999): Polanski is a very contradictory director for his sexual abuse charges, therefore it feels shameful to admit liking his films or considering his films to be valued. Many find Gate as a dull thriller. The film doesn’t rely on jump scares or gore but the mystery around the occult books and the things you can’t see. 

"Why do I like this?": Bachelor Party (1984): This is my favourite question of them all. I discussed with @faisonsunreve about on what basis you should answer this and does it reveal your true movie taste. The 80’s crazy comedy is a silly and out-dated genre and that is why the films of this era fascinate me. Bachelor Party is full of lame humor and over-the-top characters. Yet the storyline is versatile and entertaining. Young Tom Hanks embodies the past. 

Great soundtrack: La Cage aux Folles (1978): Ennio Morricone has said first he has to understand the film, the images, the story and the director’s intentions before starting to compose. I would like to know his study for Folles, because the soundtrack has such a humorous, characteristic and warm sound. 

That cinematography: Furiant (2015): I was balancing between Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) and La double vie de Véronique (1991), but this short film stands out with the way the rural landscapes, the dimly lit rooms and the unspoken moments are visualized (and edited) by the producer, director, writer, cinematographer and editor Ondřej Hudeček.

Criminally overlooked: Angélique film series (1964-68): Yes, you could put almost any Conrad Veidt film here, however I chose this. I have been fond of Angélique films since I was a child. These spectacles tell the story of Angélique in the time of King Louis XIV of France. Romance, adventure, scheming with breathtaking soundtrack and costume design, beautiful Michèle Mercier in the leading role and the flashy way of speaking French offer us an exquisite interpretation from the 60’s. 

Favorite active director: Peter Strickland: I have seen only The Duke of Burgundy (2014) and Flux Gourmet (2022), nevertheless his style of using the aesthetics of Italian genre films and the intimacy he creates is just heartwarming.

Anyone who wants to make their own version, please do and let me know. 📼📀📦🔦

#favorite movie meme but different #the thief of bagdad #some like it hot #star wars #the empire strikes back #napoléon #elvis 2022 #werk ohne autor #angels & demons #moulin rouge #the ninth gate #titanic #bachelor party #la cage aux folles #furiant #three men and a baby #drive #lord of the rings #bridget jones's diary #north by northwest #wax mask #angélique #under sandet #peter strickland #aladdin #the dark knight #personal #tag game #own edit #own post

[sagecodex]

My Favorite Forum Scripts

The unofficial part two of My Favorite Skin-Building Scripts, this is a collection of scripts that I wish more forums used! Not quite essential for building your forum, but definitely nice to have from an end user perspective. Like the post draft saver, post bookmarks, ctrl+b/i/u, etc.

These are some of my favorites from the resource forums jCodes and Sourced, both of which have a lot more codes available than the ones I pulled out as my favorites. So go check those resource forums out!

Add # of Alerts to Board Title by Cory If you have more than 0 alerts, it adds that number to the browser tab title. Like how Tumblr has the number of new posts on your dash in the title! Great for pressuring me into replies when my ADHD clicks over to Pinterest. Ctrl+B/I/U by Cory  When you hit CTRL+B/I/U it adds the appropriate BBcode. This is on John’s list to make a default feature, but until then this script is incredibly handy and if I ever have to type [b] again I’ll probably kill something.

Fast Reply BBcodes by Kon Adds BBcodes to the fast reply box! This includes custom BBcodes.

Floating Login by Skyon Archer Creates a popup login screen out of the login link. Great if you don’t want to design your own modal.

Form Submission Script by Black Useful for claims (if you’re not using auto-claims) or other forum functions, where you can customize a form for users to fill out. The form will then post as a reply to the topic it’s posted in.

Membergroup Counter by Essi Pulls the number of accounts in a member group from the member list. Great for quick referencing in your board stats. If knowing ratios is your thing.

Post bookmarks by Cory  Similar to tracked topics, but this creates a new bookmarks page, allowing you to add categories and notes about specific bookmarks you make! This is incredibly genius and I WISH more sites would use this!! Helps me save those spicy posts to read again later~

Post Drafts by Cory Saves a copy of the post you’re writing in local storage every 30 seconds. This has saved my ass countless times because my browsers (and their 400 tabs) like to crash. There’s also a manual save version if you don’t like the auto-save.

Post Tags by Cory Lets you add tags to posts so you can easily search the whole forum for posts with the same tags. There’s another version for topic tags, too! Great for tagging ships, tropes, etc. especially on sandbox sites! Note: all tag keywords should be unique and longer than 3 characters.

Recent Topics Anywhere by Essi Adds your recent topics list.........anywhere. lol. Love it for maximum snooping into everyone’s threads, which I do often.

Tagging Username List by Cory When you start typing out a tag with the @ symbol in posts, a list of usernames that start with those characters pops up. Clicking one of them autocompletes the tag. Great for when you forget how to spell every character’s name lol.

User-selectable Avatars by Cory Useful for sandboxes! It allows users to add a selection of custom avatars into a profile field, and then select the one they want to use from a dropdown menu in the posting page.

Remember, adding scripts and plugins can cause your website load time to slow down, especially on older machines or in places with slower internet. So please be mindful about your member base and what you consider most important to your forum experience.

Please note: Be sure to provide credit to the original coders when using anything you have not created yourself. If you’re using these codes in any commissions, please be sure to read the original coders’ terms of service and/or reach out to them before selling their work with your own. And if you like what they’re doing, toss them a few bucks in their tip jars!

#jcink #jcink codes #jcink coder #jcink skin #recommendation #rec #resources #codes #resource #coding resource #i hope my colorful commentary is helpful #was this inspired by a recent convo in the jcc? maybe #if you click on half of these jcodes links you can see me struggling in the replies. do a shot every time you see me crying #part 3 will probably be me linking to very specific threads i've made on the jcink support forum because i needed functionality lol

[douglysium]

The Flavor of MTG’s Color Pie(Part 1/4(Reuploaded))

Introduction

So, I have since finished my little miniseries on the tribes of Innistrad and how their color philosophies express them in their culture, story, and mechanics, and I really enjoyed talking about it so I figured I would write some stuff on the factions as we see them on different planes and how the color philosophies manifest within them. 

I have also realized that this article is way longer than I thought it was going to be so I’m going to make a different version that splits each section into parts.

Before I move on if you want to see my previous(much shorter) MTG articles covering the tribes of Innistrad then you can view them here-  https://douglysium.tumblr.com/tagged/TheTasteOfMagicTheGathering. If there’s a specific tribe you want to read about then you can view them here.

Werewolves- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/662623213059276800/the-taste-of-innistrads-werewolves

Humans- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/662755543203643392/the-taste-of-humans-on-innistrad

Angels- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/663299115099308033/the-taste-of-innistrads-angels

Geists- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/664030257036361728/the-taste-of-innistrads-spirits

Zombies- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/664566115054256128/the-taste-of-innistrads-zombies

Vampires- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/664656723908362240/the-taste-of-innistrads-vampire

I could basically talk all day about the Color Pie if you caught me in the mood, and it turns out I am in the mood.

Although, before we jump straight into the philosophies themselves I decided to make this little intro first to cover my overall goal with this piece. The idea behind this is that it’s basically a housekeeping article. I take what I feel are some important overarching things to consider no matter what color or mechanic you are looking at and try to summarize them so I won’t be forced to repeatedly explain the same concepts over and over, and we can spend more time looking at the aspects that are more specific to each color.

As for what this series covers? Well, my first goal is simply to give my own explanation and thoughts about how the colors work but I also want to look at both the philosophical, and mechanical/gameplay sides of each color and how they tie into each other. I want to look at flavor questions such as how a White-aligned character may act or why this Green-aligned character may not like that Green-aligned character or how a faction’s color alignment can tell us about its goals and priorities, and gameplay questions like “Why does Blue draw so many cards? Why does Red have Haste? Why is Black always bringing stuff back from the graveyard?” etc. I do plan to still cover the color identities of factions within Magic’s multiverse eventually, probably between color articles to keep things interesting, but for now, our focus is on the colors themselves as I feel this creates a good foundation for any future tribe or faction based analysis, since if anyone is ever confused about something I bring up regarding colors in general then they could probably check them out here.

I should also mention that I’m definitely not the first person to cover the philosophies of the colors. You have people like TheManaSource, Dicetry, It’s Not Good, Lorely Writes, and even people who literally make Magic the Gathering products at Wizards of the Coast themselves, like Mark Rosewater, have plenty of blogs, videos, and podcasts that cover it. In fact, as I’m writing this Mark has recently made a convenient compendium of all his Color Pie related stuff, which you can check out here → https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/lets-talk-color-pie-2021-10-11.

So at the end of the day, my goal with this article is to 1. Summarize and go over some general overarching themes or questions regarding the colors, 2. Act as the groundwork for the rest of the series and 3. Hopefully, allow me to explain why I personally love the Color Pie. So let’s begin.

The Color Pie in General

So first off, what does it even mean to be aligned with a certain color? Well, basically the gist of each color is that they represent a character’s core values and, by extension, their ideology. An example of this would be how Blue believes that the most important thing in life is being the best you one can be and that the optimal way to achieve that is through gaining knowledge, meanwhile Red believes the most important thing in life is to follow your heart and do what you want. What determines what color alignment someone/something falls under is not necessarily the state of their existence or even their personalities but rather what they believe in and value. I mean yeah, goblins are often Red-aligned and different species or tribes within Magic tend to share one or more colors for various reasons, such as culture, but this isn’t the end all be all mind you. Being human doesn’t mean you have to have White in your color identity, and just being a living thing isn’t enough to make you Green-aligned, and simply being hungry and wanting to eat or just feeling emotions does not guarantee you are of the Red-alignment. Heck, if you want to go back to the second point, we have even seen robots with Green in their identity. Which I know may surprise some considering how often it can destroy artifacts and how much it holds nature in high regard.

When it comes to the point about personalities, what I mean is that while it is true that a character’s personality can give you clues about what someone’s/something’s values is there is quite a bit of nuance to it. A common example we are given to help prove my point is that just because someone is super organized does not mean that they are aligned with White, but if they VALUE organization and the greater good they might be White-aligned(by extension I suppose this would also mean you can have messy or slovenly White-aligned characters). A mistake that I feel happens relatively often is that I see people assuming that a color has a sort of monopoly on a concept, behavior, or trait. For example, Red is the color that values emotion the most. So some people may look at Red and determine “Ok, so every card that depicts strong emotions, or an emotional moment has to have Red in it right?”

Well… no…

Now don’t get me wrong, Red is clearly the MOST LIKELY to have cards depicting strong emotions due to its belief that you should follow your heart first and foremost. However, that doesn’t mean that the other colors don’t have any emotions or can’t have emotional moments. What tends to be more important when looking at the colors as a whole is not only whether a character within that color has emotions but how they view their emotions and the emotions of others.

Let’s say you have two characters that are both really really angry. We will refer to these characters as John and Jim. John hates bottling up his emotions or holding them back. He believes that you should follow your heart if you want to be happy in life. So when John gets angry he doesn’t pull punches. If someone pisses him off he’ll simply fight them and say something like “Well he shouldn’t have pissed me off,” or maybe he’ll just scream at them and storm off. Both of these outcomes are equally likely.

On the other hand, there’s Jim. Jim is also super emotional but he has a strong moral code. He argues that it’s wrong to get into fights with people when it can be avoided and that you shouldn’t let your emotions control you or else you may end up causing a lot of unnecessary pain for both yourself and others and that’s something he abhors. So when Jim gets super angry he may raise his voice a bit but he will avoid throwing the first punch and will usually go home and do jumping jacks as an outlet for his anger.

Now as many can probably guess in this example, I think it’s safe to say that John is of the Red-alignment in some way while Jim is of the White-alignment in some form. John is someone who believes in following his heart and thus will prioritize what he feels and wants above basically everything else in a given situation. Jim is also an extremely emotional character but he prizes morality and peace above his emotions and is thus more willing to put off things that he wants to do(like punching someone in the face or yelling) for the greater good, or the good of the many. The point I’m trying to get across here is that it’s not that all White or Blue-aligned people intrinsically hate emotion in all its forms but rather they disagree with what Red values and how it reacts to emotions, and by the same token Red has a problem with White and Blue’s priorities. It’s also important to take into account that no one is perfect. It is possible for Jim to get so angry that he fails to properly contain his emotions and he ends up punching someone or getting into a fight. However, due to the philosophy of the White-alignment, I think it’s safe to say that he would probably feel bad about it or at least consider it a mistake/failing on his part in some way. Hopefully, you get what I’m trying to say, the color alignments don’t have a monopoly on concepts like emotion, order, intelligence, greed, concern for one’s own well being, etc., and even though color may be more likely to have it be more pronounced or emphasized in their personality or actions it does not guarantee it nor does it mean that the other colors are completely restricted from having it show up in their personality. The key point I’m trying to get across here is that the best way to help determine where someone sits on the Color Pie is based on what they VALUE as opposed to personality being the end all be all. Also, it should be noted that, yes, a personality can give you clues into what someone values. I mean, if you’re someone who views forethought and knowledge as part of the ideal we should strive for then you are more likely to be thoughtful but not everyone with the same or similar philosophy has the exact same personality. It should be noted that outside factors can also affect how a character acts even if it does not change their alignment, but more on that later.

The Gist of 5 Colors

Now as with most philosophical things there is a lot of discussion and debate to be had, and honestly, I could probably write an entire book solely on Color Pie philosophy alone. However, I figured that since it might be a bit before I finish writing the next article it might be helpful to give you all a taste of what each color is all about. Also, in case you don’t know we are going to go over them in WUBRG order, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with that term, it’s short for White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green and is the order in which the colors are represented. Why is Blue represented by U? I’ll talk about that when I make an article solely dedicated to Blue.

White believes in “Peace through Structure.” That is to say that it wishes to achieve peace and prosperity through various structures, such as laws, moral codes, religion, etc. It also believes in some form of objective morality(there are just some things that are morally wrong to do and some things are morally right). White values the community and the greater good over the good of the individual, and it often attempts to use social constructs and rules in order to help as many people as it can get what they need and guide them on the right path. Now, there is an extremely important distinction in the fact that White believes that there are enough resources for everyone to do what they NEED, and not everything they WANT. Which ultimately ties into White’s theme of sacrifice. Since White believes in putting the greater good above personal/selfish needs it argues that sometimes sacrifices are necessary for the bigger overarching goal. Also, when I say sacrifice in this case I am not solely referring to giving one’s life for a cause, although that can happen, I also mean sacrificing more mundane things like one’s time, money, making sure to avoid going to massive gatherings in order to help prevent the spread of something like a disease or sickness during a pandemic, even if that one party looks rad as hell, and other similar things/concepts. Before I continue, one thing that’s important to remember when looking at all the colors is that none of the colors are inherently good or bad. I mean yes due to White’s moral bent it will basically always want to do the right thing and even if it’s in an antagonist/villainous role it will usually believe it is doing the right thing because… I mean White genuinely does want to help and do the right thing, but at the end of the day intentions can only take you so far. You could also argue that certain colors are more likely to commit acts that a majority of people would consider “bad” or “evil” but again none of the colors are necessarily only negative traits by default. So in order to help get this point across I’ve decided to list one strength each color has as well as one weakness. I will go into more detail regarding each color’s strengths and weaknesses in future content.

One of White’s major strengths tends to be its teamwork and organization. Due to the fact that White prioritizes structure and the needs of the group it tends to be good at working in teams or large groups of people. It also often leans towards utilizing laws and/or moral codes in order to help people stay on the right track.

One of White’s weaknesses is that since it believes in the group over the individual and an objective morality it can sometimes end up having extremely black and white(get it?) view of the world can end up creating a mindset that is extremely controlling of others in an attempt to get them to fit into a strict idea of what is right and a mold that is extremely stagnant and inflexible to changing and adapting.

Some words that are heavily associated with White are peace, law, structure, selflessness, and equality.

Blue believes in seeking “Perfection through Knowledge.” An important clarification is that Blue’s philosophy doesn’t believe you can literally be perfect but rather that we should be constantly trying to improve and be the best us we can be(perfection here is a process not necessarily an end goal). Thus, in a way it can be described as attempting to achieve perfection, since what it’s trying to do is trying to get as close as possible to it. Blue argues that the best way for us to be the best we can be is through knowledge, information, education, etc. At the end of the day, knowledge is power and the key to being able to do something is to simply know how it works and how to do it. Blue believes everyone is a blank slate and that with the proper knowledge basically anything is possible. Now Blue isn’t a philosophy that’s dumb enough to argue that if you are born without wings or with bad vision you could just gain flight and 20/20 vision with sheer willpower. Rather, if you learn how flight or vision works you could do things like build a jetpack or create a set of glasses that could compensate or negate certain issues or even allow you to do new things you never thought possible. In Blue’s eyes, you only have one life so it makes sense that you shouldn’t waste it or ruin it by making shortsighted or emotional mistakes. Thus, you should carefully consider your actions and plan for the future.

One of Blue’s greatest strengths is probably the most obvious, knowledge. Due to the fact that its philosophy prizes knowledge and thinking it tends to be very good at utilizing the information at its disposal and it is less likely to make a silly or shortsighted mistake because it likes to keep the bigger picture, and the future, in mind. So even though a Blue character is capable of making mistakes they will at the very least decrease their chances of making a careless or not thought out action.

However, one of Blue’s major weaknesses is that it can end up being too passive and slow at times. It often sits around thinking and when tasked with making a choice it will try to figure out the best option. While this is often all well and good, sometimes this can lead to Blue getting “frozen” with all the choices it has. This is in the sense that sometimes they take too long to make a decision or act so they can end up not reacting to something fast enough, or in extreme cases just not end up making a decision at all. Sometimes the easiest way to get the upper hand on Blue is to simply act before it has time to think or formulate a plan.

Some of the words that are associated with Blue are knowledge, deceit, cautious, deliberating, and perfecting.

Black believes in “Power through Opportunity’’. This means that, unlike say White, Black believes that there is no objective morality and it prioritizes the self over others. This means that Black believes that there is nothing wrong with doing whatever it takes to win, no matter how underhanded, inhumane, dishonorable, immoral, or unlawful, and thus it’s priorities can be described as trying to amass as much power and strength via any opportunity that it can make or encounter. At the end of the day, Black believes that it’s power that talks and that frankly, the world is a ruthless and unfair place. While some of the White alignment may claim that those who are of the Black alignment are the reason bad things exist, in Black’s eyes it’s the other way around. People are Black-aligned because the world is full of unfairness and brutality which in turn means that it is reasonable that people do whatever they can to survive and gain power. Black isn’t always creating all the world’s problems more so playing with the hand it was dealt in life. It is also important to note that Black is not inherently evil and White is not inherently good. First of all, Black is amoral, which means that it doesn’t actually believe in any sort of objective good and evil, and second of all, from Black’s perspective, life is already hard and unfair enough as it is. Compounding that issue with a bunch of subjective ever-changing morals, limitations, laws, and traditions that you yourself or others put on you is only hindering you. Not to mention that at the end of the day, the only one you can truly guarantee to care about you, your wants, and your safety is yourself. No one else is guaranteed or obligated to look out for you so you should look for any opportunities you see or create and use them to the fullest without mercy or shame. You should do what is best for you and whatever it takes for you to survive.

One of Black’s strengths as a color is that, at its best, it can end up being the most pragmatic out of all the colors, and thus it will be willing to do what needs to be done to achieve its goals. Sometimes other colors may be unwilling to tap into a resource they consider to be icky, scary, or unholy, such as corpses that can be used to make a zombie army, but Black is a color that rarely lets resources like that go to waste.

Now, ironically this sort of ties into one of Black’s biggest weaknesses. While Black does think things out, it’s “nothing is off-limits” ideal can end up manifesting as something that leads Black to take a lot of risks and sacrifices in order to get what it wants. Black is one of the colors that are most likely to end up messing with stuff that people say you shouldn’t mess with for a good reason, and being willing to sacrifice things for an important goal can end up making backfires or misplays blow up in your face all the more. This means that sometimes the color that is most likely to defeat Black can end up being Black itself, since at its worst it’s selfishness, greed, power-hungry ideals, and “no line is a line I’m unwilling to cross” philosophy can sometimes end up shooting it in the foot immediately or down the line.

Some words that are associated with Black are power, self-interest, death, sacrifice, and uninhibited.

Red believes in “Freedom through Action.” That is to say Red believes that in order to enjoy life to the fullest you need only to follow your emotions/heart and do what it is you want to do whenever you feel like doing it. If you feel angry and want to punch something then punch something, if you’re sad and want to cry then cry, if you’re happy and want to laugh then laugh, so on and so forth. Red doesn’t even bother to promise that you won’t make mistakes or get into fights but in Red’s eyes those are just part of life anyway, so there’s no point in trying to bottle up your emotions or sit around scared to do what your heart tells you. I mean you only have one life to live so why spend it not doing the things you really want to do or not acting on the stuff you feel.

One of Red’s strengths is the fact that it often acts quickly. It often knows what it wants and because of that, it will often immediately begin taking the steps needed to get what it wants. It is a color philosophy that doesn’t like just waiting around pining after things and will try to go for what it wants.

One of its weaknesses is that it can be extremely short sighted or chaotic in a lot of situations. It prizes just doing what it wants and following, often fleeting, emotions which means that it may not always think through the consequences of actions or choice. This can lead to Red being bitten in the ass either immediately or down the line because it failed to consider the long-term ramifications of something it did.

Some of the words that can be associated with Red are freedom, emotion, active, impulsive, and destructive.

Last but not least is Green. Green is a color that believes in “Growth through Acceptance.” Green’s philosophy argues that one is born with all they need to be fulfilled and by extension nature has all we need to live a complete life, one just needs to embrace it. It believes that everything is born with a purpose, wolves are born to hunt, deers are meant to be prey, birds are supposed to fly and grass needs to grow. Now, it’s important to remember that Green does believe that things can change, as nature itself is something that evolves and changes over time, but in its eyes such changes should either occur naturally and/or help you better realize your role in nature and the grand scheme of things. If you were born a sparrow then that means you were born to fly and can learn better ways to fly for example. Due to these themes of acceptance regarding your place in the universe and the natural order Green is a color that is tied strongly to things like destiny, divine purpose, and/or many other forms of predeterminism. Green advocates that, instead of fighting against our natural place, we should simply accept them as they are and come to terms with the fact that there are things we just can’t change and some things we can’t fully understand. One cannot magically sprout wings if they are a turtle or become immortal just by thinking about it, and that’s just the way things are. Green is also a color that is strongly connected to the past, tradition, and history as one of the best ways one can figure out where they belong is to look towards the past. If you want to figure out what the role of a bear is in the ecosystem then you may want to look at how bears have impacted the ecosystem in the past or the role they played in the history of that ecosystem.

One of Green’s strengths is that its belief in the natural systems of the world/universe/planes often gives it a strong understanding and connection to nature and the things that occur in it. It is a color that can definitely really appreciate how nature works and the wonder nature can hold.

One of Green’s weaknesses is also tied to the fact that Green sees nature as the best thing since sliced bread. In a weird way, it can sort of end up putting all its eggs in one basket by being unwilling to try anything that it deems unnatural. It also means that if the nature it’s relying on is lacking in something or is too damaged/destroyed it may have trouble adapting due to it’s potentially go natural or go home style beliefs.

Before we move on I might as well at least touch on Colorless, since there are objects and characters that aren’t aligned with any of the five colors. Colorless, as the name would suggest, is the lack of any color and thus it usually represents something that doesn’t have its own ideology to speak of, such as non-sentient objects or artifacts. However, it can also represent characters who have sort of transcended the normal mana colors, such as Ugin as a spirit, or beings that are beyond the understanding of the Color Pie or normal logic, such as the Eldrazi. That’s not to say that a Colorless character can’t have a personality or some sort of value but Colorless as a whole has no consistent permanently overarching philosophy.

Colorless as a whole doesn’t have any philosophical upsides or downsides since it doesn’t have a coherent philosophy it is adherent to.

Also, for the sake of clarity, there do exist artifacts and objects with a color alignment, even if they tend to be less common than those of the colorless variety. These colored artifacts are either sentient while also having a strong adherence to one of the 5 color philosophies or are just heavily attuned with or connected to some color, or color combination, of mana for whatever reason.

Color Allies and Enemies

Now, earlier I mentioned the Color Pie and WUBRG(White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green) order. Well, let’s come back to that for a second. You see, each color has two of what are called allied colors and two enemy colors. A color’s “allies” are the colors that are directly next to it on the Color Pie while enemy colors are the two colors on the opposite side of the pie from said color.

For example, White’s allied colors are the colors next to it, Blue and Green, and its enemy colors are Red and Black. As the names would imply ally colors from a purely philosophical standpoint tend to have more things they agree on with the colors they are allied with and enemy colors tend to have a lot of ideologies that directly oppose their respective enemy colors. If we go back to White we can see that one of the things White prioritizes is structure and the greater good. Green also has a sense of right and wrong like White does and it also has a sense of structure about the way things are supposed to be. Blue also likes structures that can help improve things and spread knowledge, plus it has a sense of the bigger picture and understands that you shouldn’t always put your needs and wants above everyone else. On the other hand, you have Black and Red. Black argues you should always put yourself first and look out for yourself and Red’s philosophy is that you should follow your heart and do whatever you feel like doing. These ideals directly oppose White’s ideals of the greater good and selflessness(These are just brief examples by the way they aren’t meant to be super in-depth).

Now just to be clear, just because a color is allied with another color does not mean that those colors see eye to eye on everything or always agree with each other, and even enemy colors still have things they agree on. Furthermore, not every character that aligns with a color gets along with every single character that is of the allied colors nor do they hate all characters who align with their enemy colors. I mean, yes a Green aligned character is probably more likely to get along with a White aligned character than a Black aligned one because of the fact that in general people with similar philosophies about how the world should work are usually more likely to get along with each other, but this isn’t the end all be all or a hard rule. Heck, characters that fall under the exact same color alignment(s) can be diametrically opposed. Two Blue characters may have different ideas of what perfection they should be striving for and one White aligned character may have a different definition of what’s morally good and peaceful than another White aligned character to the point where they may become enemies, see each other as threats or just simply find themselves on opposing sides of some sort of conflict.

Remember, color philosophy, and philosophy in general, is not just a stock character personality. Certain overarching traits are more likely to occur due to their ideals but this does not mean literally everyone in said color alignment has them nor does it mean everyone within said color alignments embodies literally every aspect of that color. While the colors are archetypes they are PHILOSOPHICAL archetypes, not personality ones.

When it comes to ally/matching color alignments it helps to think of it this way. Does every person within a political alignment or party see eye to eye on every issue, do they all have the same exact personality? No, of course not. There may be some traits a lot of them have due to who their philosophy appeals to but they aren’t all carbon copies of each other nor do they all get along. A color’s relationship with enemy colors can be thought of in a similar way. I’m sure everyone has at least one friend who has wildly different opinions on how good a tv show is or a certain aspect of what they consider ideal for themselves, their community, or the world. Just because your opinions aren’t one to one doesn’t mean you aren’t friends.

To that end, where the color pie places each color is a sort of measurement for how well each philosophy sinks up with each other. A Blue aligned person or character can still have Red or Green aligned friends and family(just make sure to avoid talking about politics with them on thanksgiving). I mean heck, Teferi is a Blue, and sometimes White-Blue, aligned character that is in a happy and loving relationship with the Red aligned Subira, and White and Blue are about as opposite from Red as you can get on the color pie.

It is also important to mention that characters of various color alignments can rub off on each other in various ways without completely altering the alignment of whoever they’re affecting. You can have a Black aligned character hanging around a bunch of White aligned people and thus have them be more likely to follow whatever laws and/or rules these people make because they know that breaking them and getting caught might be way more trouble than it’s worth. Conversely, you could have a White aligned character hanging around Black aligned people who does something that could normally be considered more Black aligned or immoral due to things such as peer/social pressure without losing their White alignment.

We should also consider that not every person or character necessarily embodies literally every aspect of the color they fall under. Yeah, there are a few key aspects to the ideology which in turn makes the occurrence of certain strengths and/or weaknesses more prevalent or easier to fall into for those aligned with said colors. but not every White aligned character is uncompromising, and not every Blue character comes off as cold or emotionless to others for example. It’s just that characters in these alignments are more likely to fall into these pitfalls when compared to other colors due to their heavily moral and information-dependent values respectively, but it’s not universal or a trait literally every character will have. A lot of these potential shortcomings can also act as various forms of inner conflict, and not just an outer conflict, for characters.

Color Combinations

I might as well randomly segue into color combinations. So you don’t have to pick just one if several colors sound equally correct to you. Any person or thing can have anywhere from one to all five colors in their identity and all the various combinations that entails. Heck, as I went over previously, in Magic there are some things that don’t have any colors in their color identity.

Each color combination has its own philosophy that tends to be based on the agreements of the component colors. For example, Green likes understanding nature and watching nature change and evolve and Blue also likes understanding things, knowledge, and watching things improve. So when you slap these two philosophies together you often get one that prizes things like progress and evolution.

I should also mention that just like mono-colors, there are a myriad of ways that characters with these philosophies can manifest ,and there are no hard rules about how they act or who they can be. Also, the same combination of colors can manifest differently depending on how the two colors combine. Instead of combining the progress aspect of Green and Blue, you could combine Green wanting to understand nature along with Blue wanting to understand things too in order to get a character who seeks to fully understand and harness nature to its fullest potential…

or you could take Green wanting to preserve nature and Blue wanting to preserve things for the sake of preserving information to create a way of thinking that wishes to protect nature.

This is all without even getting into center and secondary colors by the way.

Where Colors Fall

Before we continue on, let’s quickly go back to the Color Pie in general and look into more of the specifics regarding why cards within Magic are put into certain color(s). For the sake of convenience, I have decided to make my own categories for the three general reasons that determine where a card ends up, Flavor, Mechanical and Mixed.

I already touched on a bit of philosophy and flavor earlier so I will keep my covering of the Flavor category brief. Cards that I have put in this category have their color identity based on the fact that the action, idea, archetype, or character said card is depicting is either straight up inherently a type of ideology or trait that falls under the philosophy of a specific color(s) or is something that is far more likely to fall under the philosophy of said color(s) than it would in other color identities.

Cards that fall under the Mechanical category are there because their colors are strictly based on their gameplay or mechanics(cards that have their mechanics based solely on the fact that they are part of a cycle could also be considered a subcategory of this type). I’ve noticed that cards in this category can have actions, ideas or archetypes that don’t necessarily align perfectly with a color’s ideology or method of doing something but it’s mechanics do align with the color’s gameplay identity.

I think a good example of what I mean would be cards like Baffling End and Fateful Absence. I’m going to be honest, I don’t really know what is inherently White-aligned about a poor motherfucker just vanishing for no explainable reason, but mechanically these cards fit into White’s ability to sort of “trade” with a player by exiling or destroying something they control and giving them something in return.

The final category is of course the Mixed category. Which is kind of just here for any cards that don’t fit cleanly into either of the previous categories.

I should mention that I don’t believe this is a perfect categorical system. MTG is very complex and nuanced at times so there are plenty of arguments to be made. For example, you could argue that Armored Whirl Turtle is of the mixed or mechanical category because having high toughness and low power does fit into like White and Blue sections of the Color Pie. These categories are a kind of simplification that is meant to help get some of these ideas and flavor or mechanic themes across.

Center/Focus and Secondary Colors

Due to all this talk about multi-colored alignments, I think it’s time to touch upon center and secondary colors.

A person or character can have one or more “center” and/or secondary colors in their color identity. For example, someone like Teferi might be both White and Blue but their center color is Blue and their secondary color is White.

Meanwhile, someone like Kaya has both White AND Black as their center colors. I’ve also seen center colors referred to as focus colors but they are the same thing.

So what even is a center color? As mentioned earlier, multi-colored philosophies tend to be formed from what the colors that make them up agree on. However, when you assign a color as a center or focus you will have the philosophy in question lean towards that color more. The best way to explain is like this, you have a White-Blue character and their center is Blue. So they value Blue’s philosophical goal of perfection and being the best you one can be. However, the presence of White as a secondary color sort of alters how they believe that goal should be achieved. In this case, you end up having a character who tries to achieve Blue’s end goal through White’s means and way of thinking. Thus, you end up with a character who is somehow using White’s structure or morals in order to be the best they can be and try to improve the world around them. This presence of center and secondary colors adds a whole new layer of depth to color identity and can be used to better understand multicolored philosophies. As you can tell when it comes to center and secondary colors you can usually break them down into a formula of whatever the end goal of the color is + what they believe should be done to achieve it.

Now of course, like with most things regarding the Color Pie, there are a lot of nuances to be had. So I’m going to save more specific talks about what different center colors can mean when paired with other specific colors and how they can manifest at a later date. Things like center and secondary colors can have exceptions or manifest in wildly different ways.

Mechanics

Now of course I can’t claim to make a series that will cover how the Color Pie affects Magic the Gathering’s keywords and mechanics without discussing how the colors themselves influence the gameplay and game design of Magic.

Just like how each of the colors and their various combinations have their own strengths and weaknesses from a philosophical point of view they also have their own strengths and weaknesses in their respective gameplay. For example, Red is pretty good at damaging creatures, planeswalkers, players, and destroying artifacts but it usually has a really tough time when it comes to having any way to deal with enchantments. Meanwhile, Blue has counterspells to stop things from entering the battlefield, ways to bounce permanents, and to draw cards. However, it tends to be incredibly bad at destroying permanents once they are actually on the field.

It’s important to remember that there tends to be at least one exception to these mechanical rules I’m describing. Sometimes the design team just makes an honest mistake and gives a color something that messes with what’s supposed to be a color’s weakness(es).

Sometimes the mechanical side of the Color Pie changes and what was once thought to make sense in a color for gameplay and/or philosophy based reasons gets changed, added, removed, etc.

One thing you should always remember, and I can’t state this enough, is that a color doing something it normally can’t isn’t automatically some sort of mistake or Color Pie break. Sometimes colors can do something but only on rare occasions, sometimes there are cards that let a color makeup for a weakness to some degree but at some sort of major cost or downside.

There are times where a set that a color is in has a theme that just ends up applying to all the other colors too. An example of this is Amonkhet’s or Innistrad’s respective heavy graveyard themes. In such sets colors outside of Black may also get more graveyard recursion than usual, in this case, it comes in the form of mechanics like Embalm, Eternalize, Flashback, and/or Disturb.

We’ll come back to Color Pie breaks and bends later. So let’s talk about mana and how it ties into the Color Pie and gameplay.

As you probably already know, in Magic there is a mana system. If you want to cast a Blue spell you need Blue mana, and you can’t just use Blue mana in order to cast a purely Red mana spell-like Shock.

This mana system creates an interesting interaction where players must fight two competing forces within the game. One force is pushing you to play with cards and decks that have as many colors as possible. This is because every color has strengths and weaknesses and the more colors you have in your decks the more likely you will be able to compensate for, and overcome, the weaknesses of each color. You could do something like use Blue to make up for White’s lack of card draw, Red to make up for Blue’s lack of damage dealing, Black’s -1/-1 counters to help Red deal with indestructible creatures, White to help Red deal with enchantments, and so on and so forth.

However, this force comes into direct conflict with the mana system because the mana system actually pushes players in the exact opposite direction.

Since you can’t use the Red mana produced by your basic Mountains to pay for your exclusively Blue mana Opt and you are unable to spend Blue mana to cast you purely Green Gigantosaurus you are encouraged to stick to as few colors as possible in order to increase the possibility that you will have the proper mana needed to cast the spells you need at any given time.

If you’re running a Mono-White deck you don’t have to worry about accidentally drawing a Mountain when you need an Island, but you give up having the presence of Red’s mechanical strengths in your deck and it may make any of White’s mechanical weaknesses in your deck that much more prominent. You are basically forced to choose between variety and consistency to varying degrees on various levels of gameplay. This helps prevent a gameplay situation where five-color decks are literally the only kind of deck worth playing in all forms of Magic until the end of time. These two opposing forces basically force(haha) the player to consider the strengths and weaknesses of each color while also deciding what is the most optimal way to make their deck consistent.

The colors also help give the players realistic expectations of how a match might play out the moment the first lands have been placed down. For example, If I’m playing against Billy and he puts a Mountain into play I now know Billy is playing Red and will likely have some form of direct damage. So I should be careful and play with those factors in mind or else I may end up being punished by having all my small and important creatures destroyed by direct damage. I should also be careful about letting my health drop too low because while a color such as White might not be able to finish me off unless it manages to deal damage with its Flying creatures, a color like Red can just damage me directly with a variety of different spells.

Now if Billy plays an Island I now know he’s playing Blue and that I have to watch out for counterspells. Maybe, I can trick Billy by playing a spell that seems to be important so that if he decides to counter it I can play the spell I actually need to win the game while all he’s out of resources.

One of the things that Mark Rosewater points out is integral to game design is restrictions and limits. To a random passerby, saying something like this might come off as confusing but it actually makes a lot of sense. Let me put it this way, imagine if Magic the Gathering had no mana costs to consider, you could put any number of cards in your deck(no matter the format), all colors could do literally everything else the other colors could do with no downside, you could pick the exact cards that start in your hand, and had infinite health. Yeah, the game would fucking suck. It is very rare for a game that has no limitations to have any point in playing it. Yeah, I admit that the infinite health example might be a bit extreme. However, even without the infinite health, the version of Magic the Gathering I’ve described would literally play out the exact same every time. Most people would probably end up just running the same deck over and over with the exact same outcomes or they would probably just end up putting more interesting limitations themselves via the creation of new formats. In this way limitations actually breed creativity by forcing you to figure out interesting ways to achieve your goals(As mentioned in “Lesson #18: Restrictions breed creativity” in the “TWENTY YEARS, TWENTY LESSONS—PART 3” article).

Marro has also stated that “To design a good game, you need to understand why your target audience wants to play. And then you have to design your game to match that objective” and at the end of the day we all know Magic is a strategy card game. Part of the fun of Magic is that it’s kind of like a puzzle. It leads to moments like “Ok, I want to play these colors and what’s the best way to do that?,” “Ok, I want to play this specific card, how do I build a deck that supports it?,” or “Uh oh, My opponent played an enchantment that damages me every time I kill a creature, how do I play around it?”

In that last example do you try to kill them before they can amass enough creatures to be a real threat? Do you focus on gaining enough life to counteract their effects? Do you build an army of fliers and try slipping past their creatures? So on and so forth.

Also, Mark does have a good point about the fact that limitations can create really fun stories regarding gameplay. I remember one time I was using my favorite historic Izzet deck and I just barely managed to win at like one health against a Mono-White life gain deck that had managed to get over 130 total life; it was just insane(I really wish I had recorded it. I’m sure almost everyone who has played Magic enough has at least one story where they barely managed to edge out a win in a spectacular fashion through a storm of luck and wits. Stories and experiences like this wouldn’t be possible without the limitations present in the general gameplay and the limitations put on each color.

Luck

I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent away from just mechanics real quick. It’s something that I feel is important to the game and helps it in many ways and yet it isn’t talked about too often. That thing being luck.

Now, luck in games is a tricky thing. Most people don’t want a majority of their games to be purely luck-based. As that would remove any possibility of using one’s own skills to win and would make any game that isn’t the purest form of casual frustrating. At the same time, there are times where you do want to spice a game up with some luck because if you don’t do that then the game would literally play out the same way time and time again with no variation(which would get boring really fast and limit replay value). The proper ratio of luck to skill in design varies from game to game depending on its genre, mechanics, and goals but I would argue that luck does in fact help Magic as a game.

First of all, there’s the obvious fact that it prevents games from playing out the exact same way even if you or an opponent is running the same deck over and over. If people had complete control over something like their deck order or starting cards in hand then there’s a good chance that after a while any games involving that deck would play out in the exact same predictable fashion. Which would mean that the gameplay is more likely to get stale and/or you are more likely to get bored of your favorite decks.

I would also argue that luck can act as one of the previously mentioned limitations that can be ever so important to game design. It is an obstacle a player must overcome or workaround. In deckbuilding this takes the form of generally trying to make decks reach a certain level of consistency in their function and win condition by choosing the proper cards. It can also take the form of using the cards in your hand in the most ideal or strategically advantageous way, forcing the player to think of the different ways in which they can achieve their goals with different hands or situations. This also applies to facing the same opponent, since said opponents will not always cast the exact same spells, creatures, and various threats in the exact same order, if at all.

Luck is also something that helps even the playing field. It’s thanks to luck that even a five-dollar budget deck has at least a chance, even if it’s small, of beating a finely tuned and more efficient deck. Without luck, there would be very little reason in continuing to play through a game of Magic the second you realized the opponent had a more meta deck than you.

The luck system in Magic the Gathering is definitely not perfect though. We’ve all had that moment where, for some ungodly reason, you somehow mulligan three hands in a row with one land in it and games where you could have easily won if you just drew that one card that should be in your deck. The point of this isn’t to say that Magic the Gathering’s luck is ideal or perfect but I would argue that it helps the game.

#mtg #magic the gathering #color pie #color philosophy #Color Pie Philosophy #TheFlavorOfMagicTheGathering #douglysium #TheTasteOfMagicTheGathering

[hotmonkeelove]

Naruto Tag Game (New Addition)

(I did this years ago and my opinions have evolved)

Tagged by: no one, I saw it here.

How far are you in the series?: I never got past Ino-Shika-Cho and Kakashi fighting Hidan and Kakuzu. It was tiresome.

Do you prefer the anime or manga?: I don’t really read the manga, but it’s definitely better as far as Boruto is concerned, since the anime is so bent on making Mitsuki simp for Boruto.

Favorite movie: Road to Ninja

Least Favorite Movie: Of the ones I’ve seen, The Stone of Gellel was kind of dull. Couldn't follow it.

Favorite filler episodes: Most any of the ones with Lee, the Bikochu beetle arc, and Ino Screams: Chubby Paradise!

Least favorite filler episodes: The Land of Tea arc is boring! Though Aoi was cool.

Favorite male character: Orochimaru

Favorite female character: Anko

Second and third favorite male character: Gaara, Mitsuki

Second and third favorite female character: ChoCho, Tenten

Character(s) you Dislike or Hate: Boruto, Danzo, Hiruzen.

Favorite Village(s): Otogakure

Least Favorite Village(s): Konohagakure

Favorite and second favorite clan: Akimichi, Inuzuka

Favorite Sannin: Orochimaru

Least Favorite Sannin: Tsunade, but I actually love them all. I used to hate Jiraiya, but he grew on me. The pervy bastard... Now I'm hot for him! Heeheehee!

Favorite Kage: Gaara

Favorite Hokage: Tsunade

Least favorite Hokage: Kakashi himself said he was the worst, though Hiruzen was an arse.

Favorite Jinchuuriki: Gaara

Favorite tailed beast: Shukaku

Favorite Summoning: Manda

Favorite Jutsu: Orochimaru’s permanent tongue stretching jutsu. So hot and so much potential!

Favorite kekkei genkai: Either Haku’s or Kimimaro’s.

Favorite ability of Pein’s: Almighty pratfall, heehee!

Favorite Jounin or Anbu: Gai

Favorite Filler Character(s): Suzumebachi

Least Favorite Filler Character(s): Those ninja postal carriers. They’re creepy!

Favorite canon couple(s): Choji x Karui

Favorite almost canon couple(s): Orochimaru x Anko, Mitsuki x ChoCho, Zabuza x Haku, Gaara x Matsuri, Neji x Teten.

Worst canon couple: Sakura's parents are pretty lame.

Least favorite fanon couple(s): Boruto x Mitsuki, Anko x anyone other than Orochimaru (though especially Kakashi).

Favorite yaoi couple(s): Zabuza x Haku

Favorite yuri couple(s): Oddly enough, I don’t really ship any yuri pairings from Naruto. Tsunade x Mei is pretty hot, though. And sometimes Sakura x Ino.

Couple(s) that you ship romantically and as friends: Orochimaru and Tsunade

Favorite protagonist: Gaara

Favorite antagonist: Orochimaru, though I consider him the real hero!

Favorite Akatsuki member: Orochimaru!

Favorite Akatsuki couple: Sasuke x Karin, if they count?

Favorite member of Team Taka Hebi: Juugo, though the retcon his character creates really irritates me.

Least Favorite Member of Team Taka Hebi: Sasuke

Favorite member or weapon of the 7 Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist (including Zabuza and Raiga): Zabuza and his kubikiribocho!!!

Which character do you think deserves more appreciation: Anko, the real Anko. Not the ridiculously sanitized version shallow fans have to make her more palatable.

Which character do you think deserves less appreciation: Kakashi, he's way too op.

Which character(s) didn’t deserve to die: Neji, Asuma, Jiraiya.

Someone who should have died or you would not change their death: Gaara’s father. My god, did he have it coming!

Who do you ship Naruto with: Hinata; they’re boring as a married couple, but I imagine they have a secret kinky side.

Who do you ship with Sasuke: Karin, because all the biting is hot. Mmm, hurt me! Also, I like their chemistry.

Which character do you think looks good with everybody: I don’t ship characters because they “look good together.” That’s fucking stupid.

Which character out of Teams 7(don’t forget Sai),8,10, Gai would join the Akatsuki: Um, didn’t Sasuke join?

Hottest female character: Though I think Kurenai’s the prettiest, I’ll go with Mei. I will not say Anko, because that just feels like wanking.

Hottest male character: Orochimaru

Would you eat Ramen: I have. Dango is better.

What would be your ‘ninja way’: To serve a great master.

What is your opinion of the ninja world (like how Jiraiya discusses in his book): It’s cruel and corrupt.

Which character would you have liked to see drunk: Always Lee! More drunk Lee!

What do you think Kakashi’s book Icha Icha really says?: Whatever nasty filth Jiraiya wrote.

Pro-ending or anti-ending: It could’ve been better, but there are some good points.

How would your version of Naruto ending and Boruto play out (don’t be shy, make it VERY LONG, out touch the smallest details):  Orochimaru and Anko reconcile and marry, we get some backstory for Choji and Karui’s love, as well as Lee and Metal’s mom, Log gets more scenes, Mitsuki is the main protagonist, and Boruto gets the shit kicked out of him till he learns to behave. And maybe we could bring Jiraiya back to life…?

Tags: Ugh, do I have to?

#naruto #survey #tagged

[codealiaswave]

I posted 1,352 times in 2022

That's 601 more posts than 2021!

10 posts created (1%)

1,342 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@onenillup

@spasticatt

@reinadelvudu

@emyryld

@dayenurose

I tagged 72 of my posts in 2022

#gambit - 50 posts

#remy lebeau - 42 posts

#rogue - 38 posts

#romy - 24 posts

#anna marie lebeau - 23 posts

#xmen - 11 posts

#x-men - 9 posts

#marvel - 8 posts

#anna marie - 6 posts

#fanworks week - 6 posts

Longest Tag: 81 characters

#rogue canonically being the daughter of sherlock holmes isnt talked enough for me

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

For the one scene ask…

I will always want to know more about ‘Devil’s Poison.’ 🖤

Or, ‘Entanglement’. That ons has me intrigued (I want to know how that one unfolds too. Which, I know, is not the ask, but I love your fics and realize I haven’t commented on them enough. So, I’m including it here.)

Hi @dayenurose! Short Answer: The one scene for Devil's Poison is basically all their time in Andorra. And Entanglement hasn't happened yet, so not giving any secrets away there. 😁 Devil's Poison was inspired by @ludi-ling's Dangerous Foreplay. I came across the piece during my early days of crawling Deviant Art. I kept coming back to it because I couldn't figure out how Gambit and Rogue would ever be in the situation of undressing while having a knife held to Gambit's neck. Plus, Rogue doesn't typically use knives, so another curiosity.

There was only one possibility that I could ever puzzle out in my mind and that was Rogue being contracted to kill Gambit. Then that brought out a whole other mess of questions like "who would contract her?" and "why would she honor that contract?". Devil's Poison evolved around those questions and became its own organic thing.

There was so much set up I had to write to get to the 'one scene' that by the time I got to it, I almost forgot what had inspired the fic. It had truly taken on a life of its own. I just barely remembered to get the original inspiration in before they started considering each other's situation and feelings. You can see it in Rogue's choice of dress, the way Gambit shoves her up against the wall, even Saunders' physical abuse of Rogue in his high-rise office. And of course, her preferred assassin's weapon - the 'precious' karambit (the thing she tells Jean-Luc is her most prized possession).

As for Entanglement, it was all inspired by one very bored night watching Nova because there was literally nothing else to do during lockdown than watch PBS. I was snagged right away by the intro's super simple definition of quantum entanglement. About halfway through, they described how the two particles that are quantum entangled could be separated by millions of miles but still react to whatever is happening to each other. While the show didn't outright say we all have quantum entangled versions of ourselves half a galaxy away, they heavily implied it was something we should explore/consider. And well, if I say too much more, it'll give away the 'one scene'. 😁

15 notes - Posted February 12, 2022

#4

R&G Week 2022 (Day 2): Songs & Lyrics

Hey Y'all, I created a video for Rogue & Gambit Week 2022 to intro the YouTube playlist of some songs that have inspired several of my fics. (You can use FreeYourMusic to import the playlist into your preferred music provider.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2OBJjWbgAQ&list=PLaNuUR7X5wjSvK458pebj-IUm4TLV3Pp1

Warning: most are pretty moody (and girly), but I have a couple oddballs in there to break things up. The first is a nod to Kelly Thompson and the last is just silly, but one of my favs!

19 notes - Posted February 21, 2022

#3

R&G Week 2022 (Day 1): Favorite Creators

So I'm going to be totally behind in my fic submissions, but I still wanted to participate in the other activities scheduled for Rogue & Gambit Week 2022!

The fan artists that are some of my favorites are @spasticatt, @ludi-ling, @cajuncajoleart, @art-of-urbanstar, and @nicopony79. Seriously, these if these artists hadn't straight out inspired me, their art kept me going when all I wanted to do was quit because the comics were going poorly.

I have many more saved in my DeviantArt too: https://www.deviantart.com/codealiaswave3.

For fan writers, just a few (and not possibly all) include @jehilew, @ludi-ling, @chellerbelles, @dayenurose, @applejacks1552, @ginger375, @xevg, @sandmansraven, @sasschijinx.

22 notes - Posted February 21, 2022

#2

R&G Week 2022 (Day 3): Favorite Comics

I figured I'd create a visual representation of my favorite comic series or issues featuring Gambit and Rogue. After all, just a bulleted list is kind of boring!

In case you can't identify the comics in the pic, the series are:

Gambit Vol. 3

Mr. & Mrs. X

Rogue & Gambit

X-Men: The End

X-Treme X-Men

And the specific issues are:

Uncanny X-Men #348

X-Men Vol. 2 #24

X-Men: Gold #30

X-Men Origins: Gambit

24 notes - Posted February 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

R&G Week 2022 (Day 4): Favorite Fics

I'm totally getting ahead of myself here, but these are only some specific recommendations from authors who may or may not be on Tumblr:

All or Nothing by thesunwillalwaysshine98

Backseat Bliss by Gingr375

Natural by LadyCerise1891

all works by Jehilew, but especially Just Know Y'all Got Yours Comin'

Age of Shadows by hbcooper

Like a Thief in the Night by hbcooper

all works by Chellerbelle, but especially The Irony

Romy Etude 1 by jpraner

Dog Days are Over by just-beginning

A Roguish Gambit by Demon Flame

Activités Best Left Behind Closed Doors by RedPhoenix13

Voulez Vous by Liris

Playing Both Sides by Tamarai

You Are My Sunshine by Triangulum

Life is Good by Caustic Window

Baby It's Cold Outside by GrearBeloved

all works by Tamarai

As I Lay by SassC HiJinx

Blood Connections by Guarded Secrets

all works by Prexistence, but especially Guardian Devil

Southern Hearts by ragincajunlover

What Might Have Been by Stretch

all works by Eileen Blazer, but especially Eight Hours

all works by ishandahalf

We should Run Away by Caliente

Alone in My Shadow by Neurotic Temptress

Lucky Lolly by Natalia Vronsky

later works by dreamer's dawn (hehe 😉)

33 notes - Posted February 21, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[cervidae-demon]

in regards to that one person who replied to your post about warnings-

I think that people are becoming too friendly with each other online? Yes, I believe in 'treat people with respect before malice' for almost every aspect of my life but I think people need to recognize that, hey, not every little corner of the internet will forever stay safe towards them. You've stated on your blog that there will be adult content (in your bio), yet people/someone who follows you continues to ask for warnings?

I mean, I definitely understand their reasoning. Some things simply need tagging but you get the gist.

Like I said, everyone should be treated with respect and the way that person went about it felt a bit odd. Recreating your words into their own definition, and then putting down that version they created just to demean you for something you simply don't want to do is neither kind or nice.

Let's all just have fun, commute and debate respectfully. :) Don't wanna end up like twitter

Oh I do agree that some things absolutely need warnings, and this is why I tag them. Like child abuse, rape, sexual assault,...

Those are all not okay and definitely something that can trigger people. (I personally love to roleplay them because it helps me vent out my own traumas, but I understand people who don't feel comfortable with seeing those subjects online)

HOWEVER.

Like I've said before, pregnancy isn't a NSFW subject. And I hate that it has becomed so fetishized that now a day it is considered as one. Men and women become pregnant every single day, they're all around us, (for fuck sake, there is a child or two born every damn second in the world) and you can't just expect pregnant people to hide because you're not comfortable with pregnancy.

There are so many Alastor blogs that you can follow if you don't like what I do here, so please, stop trying to force me to change or add more work for me when there are simple solution for you to avoid the subject :

Unfollow me.

Or blacklist the words.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk (or something idk)

#grey weirdos (asks) #Anonymous #ooc

[agencypartnerinteractive]

How To Stay on Top Of SERPs With SEO Split Tests

SEO is always an evolving process However, over the last few years, the practice has transformed more than it has ever been. Search engine rankings are getting more competitive, and Google continually tests new algorithms that make them harder to break. This means that if you wish to remain at the top of SERPs (search results pages of engines) you must have an approach that is quick to adapt and can keep up with the latest changesthis is the reason split tests are essential!

What Is an SEO Split Test?

In simple terms Simply put, the definition of an SEO split test occurs where you test various versions of the same page and then compare the results to determine which performs better. For instance, if you have two different versions of your homepage that are the same, with one exception aspect (such as headlines or an images) You can evaluate how they perform both individually and in comparison to each other.

Make new tests so that you can monitor what's working and what's not.

Make use of proven methods to create pages that rank highly

Why You Should Be Running an SEO Split Test

You've probably heard that the results of Google's search engine change constantly. This can be a bit frustrating as you feel like you're managing an SEO campaign However, there's something thrilling about ityou never know when a changes could help your SEO ranking.

If you are looking to make your website more efficient to get the highest amount of traffic the SEO split test must be a part of your plan. A split test allows you to examine different elements of your site without having to make any changes to the site.

How To Set Up Your First Split Test

Establish your test's parameters. It's the first thing to identify the purpose of your split-test and the metrics you'll employ to determine the success of your test. It could range from adding a few new email subscribers, to growing sales by 10%..

Create your goal-tracking code. You can do this in Google Analytics or another analytics platform you're currently using, or on your own website (in the latter case, it's going to be an JavaScript tag). The ideal is to use both!

Create lists of audience members for each version of your ad, and ensure they're separate campaigns (or in the event that they're not, you should at a minimum create separate groups of ads). It's possible to add different audiences according to location and demographics as well so that if one change over time, others don't be affected accidentally. For instance, if were working for an online shop that sells women's clothing online We could have two distinct audiences "Women 18-29" and "Women 30-59+'. Similar to the conversion goals. Setting them up in two different ways can aid in ensuring accuracy later in evaluating the results, since they will not affect one another directly.

What Makes a Good Topic For A Split Test?

Before you begin creating an exam split, it's essential to have an idea of what you'd like to take the test. Here are some questions to aid you in deciding on the most appropriate subject:

Do I want to try headlines?

It would be more beneficial If I tried different images?

Does I have page's landing page require improvements?

By asking yourself these questions, you'll make sure that the subject you select is meaningful and quantifiable. You'll be able better answer them after you've selected an area for the split-test!

How To Run an Effective Split Test Campaign With Google Analytics & Optimizely?

When you conduct tests There are two kinds of information you can collect either qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative data tends to be more subjective, whereas quantitative data is more objective.

Qualitative data allows you to gather feedback from your customers on their experiences with like and do not like about a particular web page or product. For instance, if you are interested in knowing what users consider the copy on your homepage and you want to know what they think, ask for feedback from them! One method to accomplish this is to include surveys at the end of your page or a chat feature on your website which asks visitors why they left the site without turning into a lead or a sale (and/or whether they were able to find the information they were seeking). In this instance it could be helpful to find out if a user was confused by a specific section of the site--and modify it so that the other visitors don't get confused also!

Quantitative data can be used to determine how your lead generation strategy is doing. For instance, if you would like to know the percentage of your visitors become leads on your website you can provide an opt-in page that requires their email address and name in exchange for a reward.

Conclusion

Split testing is an effective tool for any business, but it's essential to grasp the basics prior to attempting. There are a variety of ways to conduct an effective split test, which is why we suggest starting with a couple of tests before moving to higher levels from to. It is possible to use Google Analytics as well as Optimizely in conjunction to keep track of the results of all your tests, be aware that certain platforms provide more powerful capabilities in comparison to other when it comes to data collection and analysis.

Your website is at the heart in the marketing strategy. Agency Partner Interactive can assist you improve it to rank top of Google in terms of relevant search phrases and bring more customers to your company. The time to begin is now! Contact us today to schedule your no-cost consultation!

#full_service_web_design_agency #seo_marketing_services #web_design_and_development_agency #social_media_marketing_services_dallas #magento_web_design_agency #top_web_development_agency #website_development_services #web_design_dallas #website_development_solutions #professional_digital_marketing_services #dallas_social_media_marketing_services #custom_graphic_agency_dallas #paid_advertising_services_dallas #internet_marketing_company #best_custom_design_agency_dallas #ui/ux_design_agency_dallas #web_and_app_development_agency_dallas #facebook_marketing

[chaotic--pan]

I posted 7,472 times in 2022

That's 7,289 more posts than 2021!

(I thinks that's a lie, no way I only posted ~200 times last year

EDIT: Ok nvm, I checked last years review and this is correct somehow????)

83 posts created (1%)

7,389 posts reblogged (99%)

(Lovely ratio 👌)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@fuckyeahfreeimmortal

@feyishven

@wizardpotions

@better-name

@batboi13

I tagged 1,182 of my posts in 2022

1. #not my art - 227 posts

2. #--- - 148 posts

(This tag I always use to separate my ramblings from the actual functional tags)

3. #our flag means death - 116 posts

4. #stobotnik - 116 posts

(Wtf ofmd and stobotnik are equal??? That's interesting considering I only was obsessed with ofmd for a few months at most, meanwhile the stobotnik brainrot already started last year and is still going on. Guess I just pass out and hit quick reblog whenever I see stobotnik, no braincells left for writing tags)

5. #rambling about pretty pretty art - 103 posts

6. #my own art - 42 posts

7. #rambling - 38 posts

8. #inktober - 29 posts

9. #agent stone - 24 posts

10. #yes - 22 posts

(Yes of course)

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#oh my fucking god jesus fucking christ oh my god fucking shit jesus fuck oh my fucking jesus fucking christ god in heaven holy fucking shi

(I think I was having a gay meltdown there)

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Van Helsing has so many doctor titles but clearly none of them are in Communications

448 notes - Posted September 13, 2022

#4

I couldn't find that post with the polycule chart anymore, so I decided to just make a new one to include Van Helsing

aaaand then I accidentally shape it like a dick.... I swear that wasn't intentional, I only noticed it when I was already done and I didn't want to redo the whole thing

updated version

479 notes - Posted September 2, 2022

#3

Shout out to that mom from Turning Red who heard her daughter screaming and trashing the bathroom and her immediate reaction was "Could that be the family curse which turns us into literal giant furry monsters?? Noo can't be! It's probably just periods no need to worry. In fact, no need to even bring up the whole curse thing, instead let me just grab my bazillion boxes of pads I hoard at all times"

679 notes - Posted March 17, 2022

#2

If the Master Emerald is a combination of multiple differently colored gems, why is it green? shouldn't it be more colorful?

(and I'm definitely not only saying this because I think all the Robotnik scenes should be upgraded to rainbow lightning)

See the full post

860 notes - Posted May 4, 2022

(Ahh yes, rainbow sonic edits my beloved)

My #1 post of 2022

They can't all be gay! It's the 80's, back then homophobia-WRONG!!

Actually homophobia was invented in 2022 by the Duffer Brothers

2,379 notes - Posted July 3, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[offlineha]

Facetune fails

Now you can be sure that all your portraits show only the best version of you - whether you’ll be using them for your professional profile or simply sharing online with friends. But now, there’s Facetune! Facetune provides easy-to-use, powerful tools (previously reserved only for the pros) to perfect every photo or selfie, making each one look like it came straight out of a high-fashion magazine. That's why magazines use expensive and complicated tools like Photoshop to make people look their best. Khloe Kardashian’s Facetune fail exposed on Twitter AugFashion 25 Views No wonder Khloe Kardashian didn’t look like herself in a glamorous Instagram shot posted in May she purposefully digitally altered it herself beyond recognition. Facetune2 gives you the confidence in creating & sharing photos, knowing you are showing. The app provides a range of powerful tools giving you the ability to precisely edit your selfies and have fun expressing the best of YOU. You get pretty much a Photoshop editing job in the palm of your hand.” - Allyson Kazmucha, iMoreĮvery photo could use a touch up. She's going to next claim that it's a port cover because she has insert the name of trendy, unpronounceable disease that she will subsequently use as an acronym here which was a result of the trauma that she has/grew up with and we should definitely refer to her (or, perhaps, one of her children) as non-binary from now on. Facetune2 is the 1 selfie editing app in the world, used by over 100 million worldwide. Check that your date and time is Set Automatically. Update your iOS or macOS to the latest version. Sign out of FaceTime, restart, and sign back in. “I have been seriously impressed with the patch quality FaceTune does. Toggle FaceTime off, wait 20-30 seconds, and toggle it back on.Facetune Can Truly Be Called Magical." - Hillel Fuld, Huffington Post "One of the Most Powerful Mobile Apps I have Ever Encountered.A hilarious online gallery has showcased some of the worlds worst Photoshop fails from warped. Professional photographers and graphic designers constantly photoshop models to perfection, and now so can you! Without the expensive price tag or complicated tools, Facetune gives you the ability to retouch and add artistic flair to selfies and portraits with ease, from the convenience of your iPhone. The Instagram stars who need to work on their Photoshop skills after hilariously epic fails. #1 Photo and Video App in 127 countries!.Facetune is a fun and powerful portrait & selfie photo editor!."Facetune helps you look your Hollywood best, even in photos taken on mobile phones." - Roy Furchgott, The NY Times While a bit of photographic enhancement or digital tweaking with something like Facetune isn’t considered a big deal, some people take the.Facetune 2 is now available on the App Store!

#Facetune fails

[hologreys]

5e homebrew classes

#5E HOMEBREW CLASSES INSTALL#

#5E HOMEBREW CLASSES FULL#

#5E HOMEBREW CLASSES CODE#

#5E HOMEBREW CLASSES FREE#

They don't have access to as many combat features as Fighters or Barbarians, and they don't gain high-level spells as quickly as Wizards or Sorcerers instead, half. In Dungeons and Dragons 5e, 'half-casters' are classes and subclasses that blend martial prowess with magic ability.

#5E HOMEBREW CLASSES INSTALL#

* This modules are available through the Install Module UI in Foundry.Īny questions about what you can use my content for? Pretty much anything, but click Permissions & Usage for more details. D&D 5e Homebrew Classes - The Atavist That Should Be Official. Kibbles' Compendium of Craft and Creation $10 Consider them my version of Unearthed Arcana options.įarling & Ironwrought are contained in KCCC (Kibbles’ Compendium of Craft and Creation) These are where I develop new and extended content for my custom classes. They are either items in an early version, or are more unique or specialized selections, often made as patron requests. *These options should be reviewed before being considered valid options for most games. Monk - Way of the Four Elements (Revised) This are revised versions of classic options. Another homebrew class designed by a popular dungeon master is the Blood 2. Warlock - The Ancient Intelligence (KCCC) Dungeons & Dragons: 6 Best Homebrew Classes.

#5E HOMEBREW CLASSES FREE#

Options available in KCCC, themed around invention and psionsics (linked options have free versions).īarbarian - Path of the Raging Mind (KCCC) More specialized and exotic options crafted with care. I like to play rougish/ranger types, so any balanced homebrew class like that would be good to play. To make different title size for the features you add a number of # (1 to 5) before the title to change the size.Ħ) I would avoid playing with images for now.Highly tested, straightforward content, made to fit all games. I'm playing a 5e game tomorrow and it's been a long time since I last played and I need a homebrew class to really make me feel amp to play. Once again you can modify that part of the left to format it automatically to the right.ĥ) You can continue typing your classes stuff on the left. D&D 5e: The Best Homebrew Classes, According To Reddit 10 The Muscle Wizard (By The Finger) 9 The Shaman (By u/Pattycakeee) 8 The Savant (By. This will create the hp/proficiency/starting equipment part of your class.

#5E HOMEBREW CLASSES CODE#

You can modify the table by changing the pre-written stuff in the preformated table in the code zone.Ĥ) Then you can click on the ''phb'' tag at the top left and select ''class feature''. A table will appear in your code zone and you see the result on your right. Princess varieties include Fairy Tale, Warrior, and.

#5E HOMEBREW CLASSES FULL#

Start by going in tables and clicking either ''class table'' for full spellcaster or ''half-table'' for other class type. Combining the musically powered, animal befriending charm you would expect of a Disney princess, and the diplomacy and leadership of Leia (also technically a Disney princess), this class allows for you to make a character with poise and elegance and who definitely doesn’t need to be rescued. A gang of goblins emerges from the brush, arrows trained on him, their smiles wide at their good fortune of finding such easy prey for the legion’s slave pens. But yet, in a way, I understand it.' -Gekko, a psion of the Order of the Masked A human clad in simple robes walks along a forest path. This will bring you to a blank ''phb'' page.Ģ) All you put in the left side of the page (the code zone) will appear formated on the right.ģ) At the top of the code zone, you have 4 tabs (editor, phb, tables and print). 'The mind is something I look into on a daily basis, and every day I'm confused as to what I see. 1) Start first by clicking on the big orange ''Create your own'' at the right of the page.

#5e homebrew classes

[douglysium]

The Flavor of MTG’s Color Pie(Part 1/4(Reuploaded))

Introduction

So, I have since finished my little miniseries on the tribes of Innistrad and how their color philosophies express them in their culture, story, and mechanics, and I really enjoyed talking about it so I figured I would write some stuff on the factions as we see them on different planes and how the color philosophies manifest within them. 

I have also realized that this article is way longer than I thought it was going to be so I’m going to make a different version that splits each section into parts.

Before I move on if you want to see my previous(much shorter) MTG articles covering the tribes of Innistrad then you can view them here-  https://douglysium.tumblr.com/tagged/TheTasteOfMagicTheGathering. If there’s a specific tribe you want to read about then you can view them here.

Werewolves- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/662623213059276800/the-taste-of-innistrads-werewolves

Humans- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/662755543203643392/the-taste-of-humans-on-innistrad

Angels- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/663299115099308033/the-taste-of-innistrads-angels

Geists- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/664030257036361728/the-taste-of-innistrads-spirits

Zombies- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/664566115054256128/the-taste-of-innistrads-zombies

Vampires- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/664656723908362240/the-taste-of-innistrads-vampire

I could basically talk all day about the Color Pie if you caught me in the mood, and it turns out I am in the mood.

Although, before we jump straight into the philosophies themselves I decided to make this little intro first to cover my overall goal with this piece. The idea behind this is that it’s basically a housekeeping article. I take what I feel are some important overarching things to consider no matter what color or mechanic you are looking at and try to summarize them so I won’t be forced to repeatedly explain the same concepts over and over, and we can spend more time looking at the aspects that are more specific to each color.

As for what this series covers? Well, my first goal is simply to give my own explanation and thoughts about how the colors work but I also want to look at both the philosophical, and mechanical/gameplay sides of each color and how they tie into each other. I want to look at flavor questions such as how a White-aligned character may act or why this Green-aligned character may not like that Green-aligned character or how a faction’s color alignment can tell us about its goals and priorities, and gameplay questions like “Why does Blue draw so many cards? Why does Red have Haste? Why is Black always bringing stuff back from the graveyard?” etc. I do plan to still cover the color identities of factions within Magic’s multiverse eventually, probably between color articles to keep things interesting, but for now, our focus is on the colors themselves as I feel this creates a good foundation for any future tribe or faction based analysis, since if anyone is ever confused about something I bring up regarding colors in general then they could probably check them out here.

I should also mention that I’m definitely not the first person to cover the philosophies of the colors. You have people like TheManaSource, Dicetry, It’s Not Good, Lorely Writes, and even people who literally make Magic the Gathering products at Wizards of the Coast themselves, like Mark Rosewater, have plenty of blogs, videos, and podcasts that cover it. In fact, as I’m writing this Mark has recently made a convenient compendium of all his Color Pie related stuff, which you can check out here → https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/lets-talk-color-pie-2021-10-11.

So at the end of the day, my goal with this article is to 1. Summarize and go over some general overarching themes or questions regarding the colors, 2. Act as the groundwork for the rest of the series and 3. Hopefully, allow me to explain why I personally love the Color Pie. So let’s begin.

The Color Pie in General

So first off, what does it even mean to be aligned with a certain color? Well, basically the gist of each color is that they represent a character’s core values and, by extension, their ideology. An example of this would be how Blue believes that the most important thing in life is being the best you one can be and that the optimal way to achieve that is through gaining knowledge, meanwhile Red believes the most important thing in life is to follow your heart and do what you want. What determines what color alignment someone/something falls under is not necessarily the state of their existence or even their personalities but rather what they believe in and value. I mean yeah, goblins are often Red-aligned and different species or tribes within Magic tend to share one or more colors for various reasons, such as culture, but this isn’t the end all be all mind you. Being human doesn’t mean you have to have White in your color identity, and just being a living thing isn’t enough to make you Green-aligned, and simply being hungry and wanting to eat or just feeling emotions does not guarantee you are of the Red-alignment. Heck, if you want to go back to the second point, we have even seen robots with Green in their identity. Which I know may surprise some considering how often it can destroy artifacts and how much it holds nature in high regard.

When it comes to the point about personalities, what I mean is that while it is true that a character’s personality can give you clues about what someone’s/something’s values is there is quite a bit of nuance to it. A common example we are given to help prove my point is that just because someone is super organized does not mean that they are aligned with White, but if they VALUE organization and the greater good they might be White-aligned(by extension I suppose this would also mean you can have messy or slovenly White-aligned characters). A mistake that I feel happens relatively often is that I see people assuming that a color has a sort of monopoly on a concept, behavior, or trait. For example, Red is the color that values emotion the most. So some people may look at Red and determine “Ok, so every card that depicts strong emotions, or an emotional moment has to have Red in it right?”

Well… no…

Now don’t get me wrong, Red is clearly the MOST LIKELY to have cards depicting strong emotions due to its belief that you should follow your heart first and foremost. However, that doesn’t mean that the other colors don’t have any emotions or can’t have emotional moments. What tends to be more important when looking at the colors as a whole is not only whether a character within that color has emotions but how they view their emotions and the emotions of others.

Let’s say you have two characters that are both really really angry. We will refer to these characters as John and Jim. John hates bottling up his emotions or holding them back. He believes that you should follow your heart if you want to be happy in life. So when John gets angry he doesn’t pull punches. If someone pisses him off he’ll simply fight them and say something like “Well he shouldn’t have pissed me off,” or maybe he’ll just scream at them and storm off. Both of these outcomes are equally likely.

On the other hand, there’s Jim. Jim is also super emotional but he has a strong moral code. He argues that it’s wrong to get into fights with people when it can be avoided and that you shouldn’t let your emotions control you or else you may end up causing a lot of unnecessary pain for both yourself and others and that’s something he abhors. So when Jim gets super angry he may raise his voice a bit but he will avoid throwing the first punch and will usually go home and do jumping jacks as an outlet for his anger.

Now as many can probably guess in this example, I think it’s safe to say that John is of the Red-alignment in some way while Jim is of the White-alignment in some form. John is someone who believes in following his heart and thus will prioritize what he feels and wants above basically everything else in a given situation. Jim is also an extremely emotional character but he prizes morality and peace above his emotions and is thus more willing to put off things that he wants to do(like punching someone in the face or yelling) for the greater good, or the good of the many. The point I’m trying to get across here is that it’s not that all White or Blue-aligned people intrinsically hate emotion in all its forms but rather they disagree with what Red values and how it reacts to emotions, and by the same token Red has a problem with White and Blue’s priorities. It’s also important to take into account that no one is perfect. It is possible for Jim to get so angry that he fails to properly contain his emotions and he ends up punching someone or getting into a fight. However, due to the philosophy of the White-alignment, I think it’s safe to say that he would probably feel bad about it or at least consider it a mistake/failing on his part in some way. Hopefully, you get what I’m trying to say, the color alignments don’t have a monopoly on concepts like emotion, order, intelligence, greed, concern for one’s own well being, etc., and even though color may be more likely to have it be more pronounced or emphasized in their personality or actions it does not guarantee it nor does it mean that the other colors are completely restricted from having it show up in their personality. The key point I’m trying to get across here is that the best way to help determine where someone sits on the Color Pie is based on what they VALUE as opposed to personality being the end all be all. Also, it should be noted that, yes, a personality can give you clues into what someone values. I mean, if you’re someone who views forethought and knowledge as part of the ideal we should strive for then you are more likely to be thoughtful but not everyone with the same or similar philosophy has the exact same personality. It should be noted that outside factors can also affect how a character acts even if it does not change their alignment, but more on that later.

The Gist of 5 Colors

Now as with most philosophical things there is a lot of discussion and debate to be had, and honestly, I could probably write an entire book solely on Color Pie philosophy alone. However, I figured that since it might be a bit before I finish writing the next article it might be helpful to give you all a taste of what each color is all about. Also, in case you don’t know we are going to go over them in WUBRG order, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with that term, it’s short for White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green and is the order in which the colors are represented. Why is Blue represented by U? I’ll talk about that when I make an article solely dedicated to Blue.

White believes in “Peace through Structure.” That is to say that it wishes to achieve peace and prosperity through various structures, such as laws, moral codes, religion, etc. It also believes in some form of objective morality(there are just some things that are morally wrong to do and some things are morally right). White values the community and the greater good over the good of the individual, and it often attempts to use social constructs and rules in order to help as many people as it can get what they need and guide them on the right path. Now, there is an extremely important distinction in the fact that White believes that there are enough resources for everyone to do what they NEED, and not everything they WANT. Which ultimately ties into White’s theme of sacrifice. Since White believes in putting the greater good above personal/selfish needs it argues that sometimes sacrifices are necessary for the bigger overarching goal. Also, when I say sacrifice in this case I am not solely referring to giving one’s life for a cause, although that can happen, I also mean sacrificing more mundane things like one’s time, money, making sure to avoid going to massive gatherings in order to help prevent the spread of something like a disease or sickness during a pandemic, even if that one party looks rad as hell, and other similar things/concepts. Before I continue, one thing that’s important to remember when looking at all the colors is that none of the colors are inherently good or bad. I mean yes due to White’s moral bent it will basically always want to do the right thing and even if it’s in an antagonist/villainous role it will usually believe it is doing the right thing because… I mean White genuinely does want to help and do the right thing, but at the end of the day intentions can only take you so far. You could also argue that certain colors are more likely to commit acts that a majority of people would consider “bad” or “evil” but again none of the colors are necessarily only negative traits by default. So in order to help get this point across I’ve decided to list one strength each color has as well as one weakness. I will go into more detail regarding each color’s strengths and weaknesses in future content.

One of White’s major strengths tends to be its teamwork and organization. Due to the fact that White prioritizes structure and the needs of the group it tends to be good at working in teams or large groups of people. It also often leans towards utilizing laws and/or moral codes in order to help people stay on the right track.

One of White’s weaknesses is that since it believes in the group over the individual and an objective morality it can sometimes end up having extremely black and white(get it?) view of the world can end up creating a mindset that is extremely controlling of others in an attempt to get them to fit into a strict idea of what is right and a mold that is extremely stagnant and inflexible to changing and adapting.

Some words that are heavily associated with White are peace, law, structure, selflessness, and equality.

Blue believes in seeking “Perfection through Knowledge.” An important clarification is that Blue’s philosophy doesn’t believe you can literally be perfect but rather that we should be constantly trying to improve and be the best us we can be(perfection here is a process not necessarily an end goal). Thus, in a way it can be described as attempting to achieve perfection, since what it’s trying to do is trying to get as close as possible to it. Blue argues that the best way for us to be the best we can be is through knowledge, information, education, etc. At the end of the day, knowledge is power and the key to being able to do something is to simply know how it works and how to do it. Blue believes everyone is a blank slate and that with the proper knowledge basically anything is possible. Now Blue isn’t a philosophy that’s dumb enough to argue that if you are born without wings or with bad vision you could just gain flight and 20/20 vision with sheer willpower. Rather, if you learn how flight or vision works you could do things like build a jetpack or create a set of glasses that could compensate or negate certain issues or even allow you to do new things you never thought possible. In Blue’s eyes, you only have one life so it makes sense that you shouldn’t waste it or ruin it by making shortsighted or emotional mistakes. Thus, you should carefully consider your actions and plan for the future.

One of Blue’s greatest strengths is probably the most obvious, knowledge. Due to the fact that its philosophy prizes knowledge and thinking it tends to be very good at utilizing the information at its disposal and it is less likely to make a silly or shortsighted mistake because it likes to keep the bigger picture, and the future, in mind. So even though a Blue character is capable of making mistakes they will at the very least decrease their chances of making a careless or not thought out action.

However, one of Blue’s major weaknesses is that it can end up being too passive and slow at times. It often sits around thinking and when tasked with making a choice it will try to figure out the best option. While this is often all well and good, sometimes this can lead to Blue getting “frozen” with all the choices it has. This is in the sense that sometimes they take too long to make a decision or act so they can end up not reacting to something fast enough, or in extreme cases just not end up making a decision at all. Sometimes the easiest way to get the upper hand on Blue is to simply act before it has time to think or formulate a plan.

Some of the words that are associated with Blue are knowledge, deceit, cautious, deliberating, and perfecting.

Black believes in “Power through Opportunity’’. This means that, unlike say White, Black believes that there is no objective morality and it prioritizes the self over others. This means that Black believes that there is nothing wrong with doing whatever it takes to win, no matter how underhanded, inhumane, dishonorable, immoral, or unlawful, and thus it’s priorities can be described as trying to amass as much power and strength via any opportunity that it can make or encounter. At the end of the day, Black believes that it’s power that talks and that frankly, the world is a ruthless and unfair place. While some of the White alignment may claim that those who are of the Black alignment are the reason bad things exist, in Black’s eyes it’s the other way around. People are Black-aligned because the world is full of unfairness and brutality which in turn means that it is reasonable that people do whatever they can to survive and gain power. Black isn’t always creating all the world’s problems more so playing with the hand it was dealt in life. It is also important to note that Black is not inherently evil and White is not inherently good. First of all, Black is amoral, which means that it doesn’t actually believe in any sort of objective good and evil, and second of all, from Black’s perspective, life is already hard and unfair enough as it is. Compounding that issue with a bunch of subjective ever-changing morals, limitations, laws, and traditions that you yourself or others put on you is only hindering you. Not to mention that at the end of the day, the only one you can truly guarantee to care about you, your wants, and your safety is yourself. No one else is guaranteed or obligated to look out for you so you should look for any opportunities you see or create and use them to the fullest without mercy or shame. You should do what is best for you and whatever it takes for you to survive.

One of Black’s strengths as a color is that, at its best, it can end up being the most pragmatic out of all the colors, and thus it will be willing to do what needs to be done to achieve its goals. Sometimes other colors may be unwilling to tap into a resource they consider to be icky, scary, or unholy, such as corpses that can be used to make a zombie army, but Black is a color that rarely lets resources like that go to waste.

Now, ironically this sort of ties into one of Black’s biggest weaknesses. While Black does think things out, it’s “nothing is off-limits” ideal can end up manifesting as something that leads Black to take a lot of risks and sacrifices in order to get what it wants. Black is one of the colors that are most likely to end up messing with stuff that people say you shouldn’t mess with for a good reason, and being willing to sacrifice things for an important goal can end up making backfires or misplays blow up in your face all the more. This means that sometimes the color that is most likely to defeat Black can end up being Black itself, since at its worst it’s selfishness, greed, power-hungry ideals, and “no line is a line I’m unwilling to cross” philosophy can sometimes end up shooting it in the foot immediately or down the line.

Some words that are associated with Black are power, self-interest, death, sacrifice, and uninhibited.

Red believes in “Freedom through Action.” That is to say Red believes that in order to enjoy life to the fullest you need only to follow your emotions/heart and do what it is you want to do whenever you feel like doing it. If you feel angry and want to punch something then punch something, if you’re sad and want to cry then cry, if you’re happy and want to laugh then laugh, so on and so forth. Red doesn’t even bother to promise that you won’t make mistakes or get into fights but in Red’s eyes those are just part of life anyway, so there’s no point in trying to bottle up your emotions or sit around scared to do what your heart tells you. I mean you only have one life to live so why spend it not doing the things you really want to do or not acting on the stuff you feel.

One of Red’s strengths is the fact that it often acts quickly. It often knows what it wants and because of that, it will often immediately begin taking the steps needed to get what it wants. It is a color philosophy that doesn’t like just waiting around pining after things and will try to go for what it wants.

One of its weaknesses is that it can be extremely short sighted or chaotic in a lot of situations. It prizes just doing what it wants and following, often fleeting, emotions which means that it may not always think through the consequences of actions or choice. This can lead to Red being bitten in the ass either immediately or down the line because it failed to consider the long-term ramifications of something it did.

Some of the words that can be associated with Red are freedom, emotion, active, impulsive, and destructive.

Last but not least is Green. Green is a color that believes in “Growth through Acceptance.” Green’s philosophy argues that one is born with all they need to be fulfilled and by extension nature has all we need to live a complete life, one just needs to embrace it. It believes that everything is born with a purpose, wolves are born to hunt, deers are meant to be prey, birds are supposed to fly and grass needs to grow. Now, it’s important to remember that Green does believe that things can change, as nature itself is something that evolves and changes over time, but in its eyes such changes should either occur naturally and/or help you better realize your role in nature and the grand scheme of things. If you were born a sparrow then that means you were born to fly and can learn better ways to fly for example. Due to these themes of acceptance regarding your place in the universe and the natural order Green is a color that is tied strongly to things like destiny, divine purpose, and/or many other forms of predeterminism. Green advocates that, instead of fighting against our natural place, we should simply accept them as they are and come to terms with the fact that there are things we just can’t change and some things we can’t fully understand. One cannot magically sprout wings if they are a turtle or become immortal just by thinking about it, and that’s just the way things are. Green is also a color that is strongly connected to the past, tradition, and history as one of the best ways one can figure out where they belong is to look towards the past. If you want to figure out what the role of a bear is in the ecosystem then you may want to look at how bears have impacted the ecosystem in the past or the role they played in the history of that ecosystem.

One of Green’s strengths is that its belief in the natural systems of the world/universe/planes often gives it a strong understanding and connection to nature and the things that occur in it. It is a color that can definitely really appreciate how nature works and the wonder nature can hold.

One of Green’s weaknesses is also tied to the fact that Green sees nature as the best thing since sliced bread. In a weird way, it can sort of end up putting all its eggs in one basket by being unwilling to try anything that it deems unnatural. It also means that if the nature it’s relying on is lacking in something or is too damaged/destroyed it may have trouble adapting due to it’s potentially go natural or go home style beliefs.

Before we move on I might as well at least touch on Colorless, since there are objects and characters that aren’t aligned with any of the five colors. Colorless, as the name would suggest, is the lack of any color and thus it usually represents something that doesn’t have its own ideology to speak of, such as non-sentient objects or artifacts. However, it can also represent characters who have sort of transcended the normal mana colors, such as Ugin as a spirit, or beings that are beyond the understanding of the Color Pie or normal logic, such as the Eldrazi. That’s not to say that a Colorless character can’t have a personality or some sort of value but Colorless as a whole has no consistent permanently overarching philosophy.

Colorless as a whole doesn’t have any philosophical upsides or downsides since it doesn’t have a coherent philosophy it is adherent to.

Also, for the sake of clarity, there do exist artifacts and objects with a color alignment, even if they tend to be less common than those of the colorless variety. These colored artifacts are either sentient while also having a strong adherence to one of the 5 color philosophies or are just heavily attuned with or connected to some color, or color combination, of mana for whatever reason.

Color Allies and Enemies

Now, earlier I mentioned the Color Pie and WUBRG(White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green) order. Well, let’s come back to that for a second. You see, each color has two of what are called allied colors and two enemy colors. A color’s “allies” are the colors that are directly next to it on the Color Pie while enemy colors are the two colors on the opposite side of the pie from said color.

For example, White’s allied colors are the colors next to it, Blue and Green, and its enemy colors are Red and Black. As the names would imply ally colors from a purely philosophical standpoint tend to have more things they agree on with the colors they are allied with and enemy colors tend to have a lot of ideologies that directly oppose their respective enemy colors. If we go back to White we can see that one of the things White prioritizes is structure and the greater good. Green also has a sense of right and wrong like White does and it also has a sense of structure about the way things are supposed to be. Blue also likes structures that can help improve things and spread knowledge, plus it has a sense of the bigger picture and understands that you shouldn’t always put your needs and wants above everyone else. On the other hand, you have Black and Red. Black argues you should always put yourself first and look out for yourself and Red’s philosophy is that you should follow your heart and do whatever you feel like doing. These ideals directly oppose White’s ideals of the greater good and selflessness(These are just brief examples by the way they aren’t meant to be super in-depth).

Now just to be clear, just because a color is allied with another color does not mean that those colors see eye to eye on everything or always agree with each other, and even enemy colors still have things they agree on. Furthermore, not every character that aligns with a color gets along with every single character that is of the allied colors nor do they hate all characters who align with their enemy colors. I mean, yes a Green aligned character is probably more likely to get along with a White aligned character than a Black aligned one because of the fact that in general people with similar philosophies about how the world should work are usually more likely to get along with each other, but this isn’t the end all be all or a hard rule. Heck, characters that fall under the exact same color alignment(s) can be diametrically opposed. Two Blue characters may have different ideas of what perfection they should be striving for and one White aligned character may have a different definition of what’s morally good and peaceful than another White aligned character to the point where they may become enemies, see each other as threats or just simply find themselves on opposing sides of some sort of conflict.

Remember, color philosophy, and philosophy in general, is not just a stock character personality. Certain overarching traits are more likely to occur due to their ideals but this does not mean literally everyone in said color alignment has them nor does it mean everyone within said color alignments embodies literally every aspect of that color. While the colors are archetypes they are PHILOSOPHICAL archetypes, not personality ones.

When it comes to ally/matching color alignments it helps to think of it this way. Does every person within a political alignment or party see eye to eye on every issue, do they all have the same exact personality? No, of course not. There may be some traits a lot of them have due to who their philosophy appeals to but they aren’t all carbon copies of each other nor do they all get along. A color’s relationship with enemy colors can be thought of in a similar way. I’m sure everyone has at least one friend who has wildly different opinions on how good a tv show is or a certain aspect of what they consider ideal for themselves, their community, or the world. Just because your opinions aren’t one to one doesn’t mean you aren’t friends.

To that end, where the color pie places each color is a sort of measurement for how well each philosophy sinks up with each other. A Blue aligned person or character can still have Red or Green aligned friends and family(just make sure to avoid talking about politics with them on thanksgiving). I mean heck, Teferi is a Blue, and sometimes White-Blue, aligned character that is in a happy and loving relationship with the Red aligned Subira, and White and Blue are about as opposite from Red as you can get on the color pie.

It is also important to mention that characters of various color alignments can rub off on each other in various ways without completely altering the alignment of whoever they’re affecting. You can have a Black aligned character hanging around a bunch of White aligned people and thus have them be more likely to follow whatever laws and/or rules these people make because they know that breaking them and getting caught might be way more trouble than it’s worth. Conversely, you could have a White aligned character hanging around Black aligned people who does something that could normally be considered more Black aligned or immoral due to things such as peer/social pressure without losing their White alignment.

We should also consider that not every person or character necessarily embodies literally every aspect of the color they fall under. Yeah, there are a few key aspects to the ideology which in turn makes the occurrence of certain strengths and/or weaknesses more prevalent or easier to fall into for those aligned with said colors. but not every White aligned character is uncompromising, and not every Blue character comes off as cold or emotionless to others for example. It’s just that characters in these alignments are more likely to fall into these pitfalls when compared to other colors due to their heavily moral and information-dependent values respectively, but it’s not universal or a trait literally every character will have. A lot of these potential shortcomings can also act as various forms of inner conflict, and not just an outer conflict, for characters.

Color Combinations

I might as well randomly segue into color combinations. So you don’t have to pick just one if several colors sound equally correct to you. Any person or thing can have anywhere from one to all five colors in their identity and all the various combinations that entails. Heck, as I went over previously, in Magic there are some things that don’t have any colors in their color identity.

Each color combination has its own philosophy that tends to be based on the agreements of the component colors. For example, Green likes understanding nature and watching nature change and evolve and Blue also likes understanding things, knowledge, and watching things improve. So when you slap these two philosophies together you often get one that prizes things like progress and evolution.

I should also mention that just like mono-colors, there are a myriad of ways that characters with these philosophies can manifest ,and there are no hard rules about how they act or who they can be. Also, the same combination of colors can manifest differently depending on how the two colors combine. Instead of combining the progress aspect of Green and Blue, you could combine Green wanting to understand nature along with Blue wanting to understand things too in order to get a character who seeks to fully understand and harness nature to its fullest potential…

or you could take Green wanting to preserve nature and Blue wanting to preserve things for the sake of preserving information to create a way of thinking that wishes to protect nature.

This is all without even getting into center and secondary colors by the way.

Where Colors Fall

Before we continue on, let’s quickly go back to the Color Pie in general and look into more of the specifics regarding why cards within Magic are put into certain color(s). For the sake of convenience, I have decided to make my own categories for the three general reasons that determine where a card ends up, Flavor, Mechanical and Mixed.

I already touched on a bit of philosophy and flavor earlier so I will keep my covering of the Flavor category brief. Cards that I have put in this category have their color identity based on the fact that the action, idea, archetype, or character said card is depicting is either straight up inherently a type of ideology or trait that falls under the philosophy of a specific color(s) or is something that is far more likely to fall under the philosophy of said color(s) than it would in other color identities.

Cards that fall under the Mechanical category are there because their colors are strictly based on their gameplay or mechanics(cards that have their mechanics based solely on the fact that they are part of a cycle could also be considered a subcategory of this type). I’ve noticed that cards in this category can have actions, ideas or archetypes that don’t necessarily align perfectly with a color’s ideology or method of doing something but it’s mechanics do align with the color’s gameplay identity.

I think a good example of what I mean would be cards like Baffling End and Fateful Absence. I’m going to be honest, I don’t really know what is inherently White-aligned about a poor motherfucker just vanishing for no explainable reason, but mechanically these cards fit into White’s ability to sort of “trade” with a player by exiling or destroying something they control and giving them something in return.

The final category is of course the Mixed category. Which is kind of just here for any cards that don’t fit cleanly into either of the previous categories.

I should mention that I don’t believe this is a perfect categorical system. MTG is very complex and nuanced at times so there are plenty of arguments to be made. For example, you could argue that Armored Whirl Turtle is of the mixed or mechanical category because having high toughness and low power does fit into like White and Blue sections of the Color Pie. These categories are a kind of simplification that is meant to help get some of these ideas and flavor or mechanic themes across.

Center/Focus and Secondary Colors

Due to all this talk about multi-colored alignments, I think it’s time to touch upon center and secondary colors.

A person or character can have one or more “center” and/or secondary colors in their color identity. For example, someone like Teferi might be both White and Blue but their center color is Blue and their secondary color is White.

Meanwhile, someone like Kaya has both White AND Black as their center colors. I’ve also seen center colors referred to as focus colors but they are the same thing.

So what even is a center color? As mentioned earlier, multi-colored philosophies tend to be formed from what the colors that make them up agree on. However, when you assign a color as a center or focus you will have the philosophy in question lean towards that color more. The best way to explain is like this, you have a White-Blue character and their center is Blue. So they value Blue’s philosophical goal of perfection and being the best you one can be. However, the presence of White as a secondary color sort of alters how they believe that goal should be achieved. In this case, you end up having a character who tries to achieve Blue’s end goal through White’s means and way of thinking. Thus, you end up with a character who is somehow using White’s structure or morals in order to be the best they can be and try to improve the world around them. This presence of center and secondary colors adds a whole new layer of depth to color identity and can be used to better understand multicolored philosophies. As you can tell when it comes to center and secondary colors you can usually break them down into a formula of whatever the end goal of the color is + what they believe should be done to achieve it.

Now of course, like with most things regarding the Color Pie, there are a lot of nuances to be had. So I’m going to save more specific talks about what different center colors can mean when paired with other specific colors and how they can manifest at a later date. Things like center and secondary colors can have exceptions or manifest in wildly different ways.

Mechanics

Now of course I can’t claim to make a series that will cover how the Color Pie affects Magic the Gathering’s keywords and mechanics without discussing how the colors themselves influence the gameplay and game design of Magic.

Just like how each of the colors and their various combinations have their own strengths and weaknesses from a philosophical point of view they also have their own strengths and weaknesses in their respective gameplay. For example, Red is pretty good at damaging creatures, planeswalkers, players, and destroying artifacts but it usually has a really tough time when it comes to having any way to deal with enchantments. Meanwhile, Blue has counterspells to stop things from entering the battlefield, ways to bounce permanents, and to draw cards. However, it tends to be incredibly bad at destroying permanents once they are actually on the field.

It’s important to remember that there tends to be at least one exception to these mechanical rules I’m describing. Sometimes the design team just makes an honest mistake and gives a color something that messes with what’s supposed to be a color’s weakness(es).

Sometimes the mechanical side of the Color Pie changes and what was once thought to make sense in a color for gameplay and/or philosophy based reasons gets changed, added, removed, etc.

One thing you should always remember, and I can’t state this enough, is that a color doing something it normally can’t isn’t automatically some sort of mistake or Color Pie break. Sometimes colors can do something but only on rare occasions, sometimes there are cards that let a color makeup for a weakness to some degree but at some sort of major cost or downside.

There are times where a set that a color is in has a theme that just ends up applying to all the other colors too. An example of this is Amonkhet’s or Innistrad’s respective heavy graveyard themes. In such sets colors outside of Black may also get more graveyard recursion than usual, in this case, it comes in the form of mechanics like Embalm, Eternalize, Flashback, and/or Disturb.

We’ll come back to Color Pie breaks and bends later. So let’s talk about mana and how it ties into the Color Pie and gameplay.

As you probably already know, in Magic there is a mana system. If you want to cast a Blue spell you need Blue mana, and you can’t just use Blue mana in order to cast a purely Red mana spell-like Shock.

This mana system creates an interesting interaction where players must fight two competing forces within the game. One force is pushing you to play with cards and decks that have as many colors as possible. This is because every color has strengths and weaknesses and the more colors you have in your decks the more likely you will be able to compensate for, and overcome, the weaknesses of each color. You could do something like use Blue to make up for White’s lack of card draw, Red to make up for Blue’s lack of damage dealing, Black’s -1/-1 counters to help Red deal with indestructible creatures, White to help Red deal with enchantments, and so on and so forth.

However, this force comes into direct conflict with the mana system because the mana system actually pushes players in the exact opposite direction.

Since you can’t use the Red mana produced by your basic Mountains to pay for your exclusively Blue mana Opt and you are unable to spend Blue mana to cast you purely Green Gigantosaurus you are encouraged to stick to as few colors as possible in order to increase the possibility that you will have the proper mana needed to cast the spells you need at any given time.

If you’re running a Mono-White deck you don’t have to worry about accidentally drawing a Mountain when you need an Island, but you give up having the presence of Red’s mechanical strengths in your deck and it may make any of White’s mechanical weaknesses in your deck that much more prominent. You are basically forced to choose between variety and consistency to varying degrees on various levels of gameplay. This helps prevent a gameplay situation where five-color decks are literally the only kind of deck worth playing in all forms of Magic until the end of time. These two opposing forces basically force(haha) the player to consider the strengths and weaknesses of each color while also deciding what is the most optimal way to make their deck consistent.

The colors also help give the players realistic expectations of how a match might play out the moment the first lands have been placed down. For example, If I’m playing against Billy and he puts a Mountain into play I now know Billy is playing Red and will likely have some form of direct damage. So I should be careful and play with those factors in mind or else I may end up being punished by having all my small and important creatures destroyed by direct damage. I should also be careful about letting my health drop too low because while a color such as White might not be able to finish me off unless it manages to deal damage with its Flying creatures, a color like Red can just damage me directly with a variety of different spells.

Now if Billy plays an Island I now know he’s playing Blue and that I have to watch out for counterspells. Maybe, I can trick Billy by playing a spell that seems to be important so that if he decides to counter it I can play the spell I actually need to win the game while all he’s out of resources.

One of the things that Mark Rosewater points out is integral to game design is restrictions and limits. To a random passerby, saying something like this might come off as confusing but it actually makes a lot of sense. Let me put it this way, imagine if Magic the Gathering had no mana costs to consider, you could put any number of cards in your deck(no matter the format), all colors could do literally everything else the other colors could do with no downside, you could pick the exact cards that start in your hand, and had infinite health. Yeah, the game would fucking suck. It is very rare for a game that has no limitations to have any point in playing it. Yeah, I admit that the infinite health example might be a bit extreme. However, even without the infinite health, the version of Magic the Gathering I’ve described would literally play out the exact same every time. Most people would probably end up just running the same deck over and over with the exact same outcomes or they would probably just end up putting more interesting limitations themselves via the creation of new formats. In this way limitations actually breed creativity by forcing you to figure out interesting ways to achieve your goals(As mentioned in “Lesson #18: Restrictions breed creativity” in the “TWENTY YEARS, TWENTY LESSONS—PART 3” article).

Marro has also stated that “To design a good game, you need to understand why your target audience wants to play. And then you have to design your game to match that objective” and at the end of the day we all know Magic is a strategy card game. Part of the fun of Magic is that it’s kind of like a puzzle. It leads to moments like “Ok, I want to play these colors and what’s the best way to do that?,” “Ok, I want to play this specific card, how do I build a deck that supports it?,” or “Uh oh, My opponent played an enchantment that damages me every time I kill a creature, how do I play around it?”

In that last example do you try to kill them before they can amass enough creatures to be a real threat? Do you focus on gaining enough life to counteract their effects? Do you build an army of fliers and try slipping past their creatures? So on and so forth.

Also, Mark does have a good point about the fact that limitations can create really fun stories regarding gameplay. I remember one time I was using my favorite historic Izzet deck and I just barely managed to win at like one health against a Mono-White life gain deck that had managed to get over 130 total life; it was just insane(I really wish I had recorded it. I’m sure almost everyone who has played Magic enough has at least one story where they barely managed to edge out a win in a spectacular fashion through a storm of luck and wits. Stories and experiences like this wouldn’t be possible without the limitations present in the general gameplay and the limitations put on each color.

Luck

I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent away from just mechanics real quick. It’s something that I feel is important to the game and helps it in many ways and yet it isn’t talked about too often. That thing being luck.

Now, luck in games is a tricky thing. Most people don’t want a majority of their games to be purely luck-based. As that would remove any possibility of using one’s own skills to win and would make any game that isn’t the purest form of casual frustrating. At the same time, there are times where you do want to spice a game up with some luck because if you don’t do that then the game would literally play out the same way time and time again with no variation(which would get boring really fast and limit replay value). The proper ratio of luck to skill in design varies from game to game depending on its genre, mechanics, and goals but I would argue that luck does in fact help Magic as a game.

First of all, there’s the obvious fact that it prevents games from playing out the exact same way even if you or an opponent is running the same deck over and over. If people had complete control over something like their deck order or starting cards in hand then there’s a good chance that after a while any games involving that deck would play out in the exact same predictable fashion. Which would mean that the gameplay is more likely to get stale and/or you are more likely to get bored of your favorite decks.

I would also argue that luck can act as one of the previously mentioned limitations that can be ever so important to game design. It is an obstacle a player must overcome or workaround. In deckbuilding this takes the form of generally trying to make decks reach a certain level of consistency in their function and win condition by choosing the proper cards. It can also take the form of using the cards in your hand in the most ideal or strategically advantageous way, forcing the player to think of the different ways in which they can achieve their goals with different hands or situations. This also applies to facing the same opponent, since said opponents will not always cast the exact same spells, creatures, and various threats in the exact same order, if at all.

Luck is also something that helps even the playing field. It’s thanks to luck that even a five-dollar budget deck has at least a chance, even if it’s small, of beating a finely tuned and more efficient deck. Without luck, there would be very little reason in continuing to play through a game of Magic the second you realized the opponent had a more meta deck than you.

The luck system in Magic the Gathering is definitely not perfect though. We’ve all had that moment where, for some ungodly reason, you somehow mulligan three hands in a row with one land in it and games where you could have easily won if you just drew that one card that should be in your deck. The point of this isn’t to say that Magic the Gathering’s luck is ideal or perfect but I would argue that it helps the game.

#mtg #magic the gathering #color pie #color philosophy #Color Pie Philosophy #TheFlavorOfMagicTheGathering #douglysium #TheTasteOfMagicTheGathering

[5ummit]

PSA regarding tumblr’s latest Censorship Nightmare

For those of you who haven’t seen this announcement, tumblr recently made some changes to the iOS version of the app, purportedly to comply with Apple’s content guidelines. These changes took effect on Dec 21, starting in version 22.5.1 of the iOS app. As some of you may recall, Apple’s strict guidelines were the driving force for the infamous Great Purge of 2018, which coincidentally also happened around this time of year, but it seems banning all of the female-presenting nipples wasn’t good enough for Apple.

Below is a summary of the important changes. Note that these changes technically ONLY affect those using the iOS app. If you’re accessing tumblr through a different app or operating system (Google Chrome, Android app, etc) it won’t affect you directly but it will affect your followers who use iOS so you should definitely be aware of it.

The list of banned tags has been expanded. As before, there’s no way to know which words or phrases have been banned until you try searching for them, in which case you’ll either get no search results or the following message: “This content has been hidden because of potentially suggestive or explicit content.” You may think this doesn’t concern you if you don’t post explicit material, but do not make the mistake of expecting the banned tags to be logical or reasonable. I've already encountered multiple completely innocuous posts (random fandom gifsets) that seem to be hidden on iOS for no discernible reason.

Blogs that have been flagged as explicit can no longer be viewed. Previously, flagged blogs just had their posts hidden from searches, but if you knew the username you could still visit it after clicking through a warning about sensitive content. Now you can’t access it at all.

Likes and reblogs from blogs that have been flagged will no longer show up in your notes. This one won’t affect most people’s user experience as much as the others, but it does mean you may be missing notes. It’s unclear if likes and reblogs from flagged blogs will still count towards the overall note total (and only be missing from the activity feed and note viewer) but I suspect that’s the case.

THE BIG ONE: ANY POST TAGGED WITH A BANNED TAG WILL NO LONGER SHOW UP ON YOUR DASHBOARD. Previously, if you tagged a post with a banned word or phrase (even if the words were used inside another tag), that post would not show up in searches, but your followers would still be able to see it on their dashboard. Now those posts are hidden from your own followers as well. This includes both original posts and reblogs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s the real kicker: even if you don’t tag something with one of the banned words, if the OP used a banned tag, any reblogs of that post will not show up on anyone’s dashboard (on the iOS app). The only saving grace here, and I hate to even call it that, is that the blocked posts are still visible if you visit a blog directly or if you have post notifications turned on.

As usual, tumblr was extremely unclear and evasive about all of this in their official announcement. Not surprising, of course, since if more people were aware of these new draconian tactics I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be more of an uproar about it. Tumblr claims that these changes are somewhat temporary and that they are currently working on something that will allow for a less restricted iOS experience, but they refuse to say what that something is and when it will be implemented. And let’s just say, considering their track record, I’m not hopeful.

All of this is horrible and infuriating for many reasons, but the worst part is how insanely counterproductive it is to creating the “safe” environment tumblr (or more specifically Apple) supposedly wants.

Tags have always been used for both blog organization and filtering purposes. Tagging posts with triggers and content warnings is a common practice that gives users the ability to filter out content they may find upsetting or just don’t don’t want to see for whatever reason. By choosing to ban a bunch of unlisted “sensitive content” tags, all they’re doing is encouraging people who want to share that kind of content to come up with alternative less well-known tags or simply not tag that content at all anymore if they want it to show up on their follower’s dashboards, thereby making it more likely for someone to encounter it when they didn’t want to.

So really, with all of the alleged concern for safety and “protecting the children,” all they’ve done is make tumblr less safe for everyone. Typical.

UPDATE (Jan 11, 2022): An optional toggle setting now exists to disable these changes. Please follow this tutorial to allow “sensitive content” on the iOS app.

#just when you think tumblr can't get any worse #hellsite (derogatory) #sorry for the long post #but this was important #tumblr #PSA #my words #tumblr purge 2: electric boogaloo #wendy's help desk