fic rec (SGA) - Waiting For My Real Life To Begin by toomuchplor

Waiting For My Real Life To Begin by toomuchplor
NC-17; Pairings: McKay/Keller, McKay/Sheppard; 25,929 words
Summary: It had changed so gradually with Jennifer, was the thing. Rodney couldn’t pick a moment when he’d felt the balance shift from “this is fucking awesome” to “wow, I’m really middle-aged”.

For months I've been shying away from stories with that particular pairing combination because I've read just one too many that did the most hideous things to Jennifer's characterization. But this story is safe for the Keller fan (unless they're at work. Worksafe, not so much.)

A joy to read... both for Rodney's exciting, sexually-adventurous-but-challenging relationship with Jennifer, and the quit, slowly building, middle-aged one he has with John. Good characterization all around, fair treatment of all the characters, believable relationships, and an interesting plot... I had a great time reading this.

speech balloons in PS - a mini-tutorial :)

jwaneeta and I were talking about ways to make comic speech balloons in Photoshop. I used to know a way of doing that involving paths, but I have forgotten the details, which is all the better because I just discovered an even easier way. Posting it here because you never know, there might be other artists on the flist who find this info useful... and I can tag it for myself in case I forget again.

This is so quick and easy, it won't even need a cut:
-Switch to selection tool, set it to 'ellipse'
-add the little arm using the polygonal-lasso
-right-click on the selection: you'll get a drop-down menu which should include the options 'fill area' and 'fill contour' [or 'fill' and 'stroke']. Fill the area with white, the contour with black (you can select the pixel width) and voilà, speech balloon.

(Okay, some of you are probably saying "D'uh" right now but I really did not know this!) Hm, I think I'll use elliptical balloons for "Fear of the Dark"...