#this gifset turned out really good because all the scenes are in the same kind of lighting unlike the previous two lol

[bizarrelovesquare]

favorite outfits on The Goldbergs: 3 / ∞

#the goldbergs #goldbergsedit #erica goldberg #evie's gifs #gif #this gifset turned out really good because all the scenes are in the same kind of lighting unlike the previous two lol

[fuckyeahisawthat]

i rewatched Dune Part Two recently and one of the most striking shots for me was the one of the Fremen attacking the Sardaukar on wormback, while holding the Atreides flag.

Like, we just saw the Sardaukar forming up with their numerous flag bearers, even trying to maintain their flags raised after the nuclear detonation (in a shot that mirrored the famous "Raising the Flag in Iwo Jima" statue to me btw, nice nod to imperialism).

And then the Fremen arrive, but they're not bearing their colors, their flags, not fighting in their own names, instead it's the Atreides colors. The colors of their new, imperially appointed rulers. New pawns in the warfare between Great Houses, soldiers instead of freedom fighters. Urgh. Wish i could make gifsets.

Yeah yeah yeah it's horrifying!! You are watching a national liberation movement get successfully co-opted by a superpower and it's awful!

They did such a good job making it feel creepy and foreboding when the Atreides symbols and motifs start re-appearing in the last hour or so of the movie. The second Gurney shows up he immediately re-introduces the Atreides way of looking at the world, and it's disturbing how easily Paul falls back into thinking like that, seeing the planet and its people as tools to be used in an inter-imperial power play. (It's right after Gurney tells him about the family nukes that Paul has the signet ring out for the first time since the beginning of the second act and we're like OH NO.) This is before he drinks the Water of Life; he is already starting to think like a colonial duke again some time before he declares himself one.

After the opening montage where we see the piles of bodies being burnt, we don't see the stylized Atreides hawk symbol for most of the movie. The next time it appears is on a vault of nuclear weapons, which are never treated as anything but a curse. It's so important that Stilgar and Chani are with Paul and Gurney when they open the vault so we can see their horror at these weapons and the gleeful, casual way Gurney talks about them. Chani is also seeing an aspect of Paul that she hasn't really witnessed before--Paul, the Future of House Atreides--and she does not like it.

And then of course the whole ending battle is making the point over and over again with repeated imagery that Atreides and Harkonnens are exactly the fucking same. All the imagery from the initial Harkonnen attack on Arrakeen in Part One--which at least shows the Atreides as brave in the face of overwhelming odds--gets inverted into something that's supposed to make us shudder. That scene of Gurney hacking his way through the crowd of soldiers with someone carrying the Atreides flag behind him? Nightmarish.

All of this stuff is super important to what the movie is trying to say because it is very very easy for us to buy into the Atreides' propaganda about themselves being the good guys. If we're paying attention to what Chani tells us in the literal first 3 minutes of the first movie, we already know we should be viewing them with a bit of critical distance. And while I think there is plenty in the first movie to make us side-eye their noble image (Leto saying we will bring peace to Arrakis?? fucking yikes dude), it's easy to forget that because Leto generally seems like a good dude to the people close to him, and he dies tragically so we never get to see much of what kind of colonizer he would have become. And I think it's easy to start thinking well if only Leto the more reasonable parent had lived then things wouldn't have turned out this way.

But fucking desert power?? That was Leto's idea. This is Leto's dream being realized. The plan was always to use the Fremen as pawns in the power struggle between the Great Houses. Maybe not quite in the way that Paul does cause he definitely goes off with it, but the end result is just as much a product of Atreides imperialism as it is of Bene Gesserit religious colonialism. The Atreides aren't inherently any more noble or benevolent than the Harkonnens in their intentions, they just have better PR. But the end result is exactly the same: a pile of dead bodies being set on fire.

#dune #dune part two #paul atreides #house atreides #asks answered #thank you so much for this ask cause it gave me a chance to go OFF lol

[saw-x]

Hi so I’ve had a couple of anons asking me how I make my gifs (some specifically hsmtmts gifs lol) so I’ve decided to write up a tutorial of the basics of how I make my gifs. I’m going to try and make it as detailed and clear as possible - but I have been pretty busy with uni and stuff so if I miss anything or anything isn’t clear just lmk and I will do my best to clarify. I’m going to try and include any resources or other tutorials which may be useful as I go along. This is going to be quite long and detailed so tutorial follows under the cut. For some basic steps I know of good tutorials for - I will link tutorials rather than re-explaining :)

Before we begin with the tutorial part bear with me there are a couple of screencaps which I took out of sequence because I forgot to take them at the step I did it - and the final gif colouring result looks kind of different from the rest of the screencaps because when I was adding the gif to the gifset I was making it for I decided it needed to be brighter because the s3 scene was much brighter than the s2 gif I made for this tutorial (none of this really matters, just explaining the slight discrepancy in some of the caps).

1. SOFTWARE

To make all of my gifs I use Photoshop CS5 (this is the version I use). Any version of Photoshop should work with the methods in this tutorial and you can find a masterlist of cracked photoshops here

2. FINDING HQ VIDEO

When making gifs I always use 1080p video - but not all 1080p is created equally. Generally remux files and larger file sizes will produce better quality screencaps so this is what I search for when giffing. I know a lot of gifmakers who swear by using 4k, but personally I find 4k is more trouble than its worth in my opinion (screencaps always come out weird on my computer - like with a full on green tint, and they take forever to download). For HSMTMS in particular I like to use the release labelled 1080p SALT.

In terms of finding videos, this is a good guide on downloading.

3. SCREENCAPPING

I use mpv player to take screencaps for my gifs. This is a tutorial on how to use and install mpv. When taking your screencaps make sure you have continuous screencaps and no frames are skipped or duplicated. These missing/extra frames will make your gif look choppy and the animation won’t be smooth.

After finishing my screencaps I put them all in folders and move the folders to my desktop (but it can be anywhere you easily can access the folder) to import into Photoshop.

4. IMPORTING SCREENCAPS TO PHOTOSHOP

Open Photoshop. Open the Menu path "File > Scripts > Load Multiple DICOM files” and select the folder where the screencaps for your gif are. 

5. CROPPING AND RESIZING GIFS

Click the ‘Crop’ button on Photoshop (the little button shown in the screenshot below). Typically I like to use a preset so that all the gifs in the set I make are the same size. For this set I used the 4x5 crop preset because that is what I typically use.

Position the crop where you want the gif (typically I like the character in the center).

Then push enter (or the tick next to the crop buttons) to confirm your crop.

Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + I to resize your image. This will bring up a little pop up like this:

Resize your gif accordingly based on the width. It is important to use the correct dimensions for the size of the gif you wish to make. These are summarized in the below image.

When you change the width to the correct size (e.g. in this case 540px) the height will automatically change as well.

Click Ok to resize.

6. ANIMATING YOUR GIF + SHARPENING

There are quite a lot of steps to turning your frames into a timeline animation. They are covered in detail in this amazing gif tutorial (which is the main one which helped me learn to gif).

It would be useful to have a read of how the process works, but to speed things up for myself I use a Photoshop action (shared here) I made that does all these steps for me plus my sharpening😊 (Here is a tutorial explaining how to create & install Photoshop actions)

I just highlight the word animate click the play sign and it does all the tedious steps in a couple of seconds. Note it is important to keep the reverse frames one unticked as shown in the screencap otherwise your gifs will move backwards

After that runs through we have our gif in timeline mode sharpened and ready to colour :)

7. BASIC COLOURING TECHNIQUE

My basic colouring process is very simple and honestly it may shock some people but I primarily colour my basic scene gifs using only the curves and vibrance adjustment layers. There a few reasons for this – 1) The curves tool is a powerful tool and you can do a lot with it 2) Less adjustment layers = better quality gifs 3) This works for me and it is what I find easy. Essentially, I like to keep things simple where ever possible.

First I add a curves layer by clicking on the highlighted adjustment layer

This gives you a menu that looks like this:

The great thing about Curves is that Photoshop will do a lot of the work for us if we use the eyedropper tools.

First I click the white eye dropper – then I pick a white point on the gif and see how it goes. This can take a few times to get right and often I will try a few times to see which I like best.

For this gif I selected the white light in the background but it looks a little green to me

After I have selected my white point I will usually do the same thing except with picking a black point of the gifs. I don’t always pick a dark point it kind of depends on how much I like what Curves has done with the white point and if I think the gif needs more contrast.

For this gif I picked a black point of the area behind Ricky. This is what the gif looks like now with the dark point chosen:

This looks a little better to me than just the white point – but the screencap still looks kind of yellowy and dark to me. So what I do now is I go into each colour channel for the curve and manually adjust it to my liking.

Since this gif is yellow I start in the blue channel and add more blue. I do this by changing the drop down menu on the curves screen from RGB to blue. This gives me something like this to work with:

Essentially I adjust the amount of blue in the gif by sliding the white arrow down the bottom up or down to add more or less blue to the gif. For this gif I am going to slide white arrow at the bottom to the left to make the gif more blue (i.e. neutralise yellow). If I think I have added too much blue I slide it back to the right to add yellow back in.

This is what I adjusted it to and it already looks a lot better

I am actually pretty happy with the overall colouring of this for the moment and I don’t think I need to go into the red and green curves. But I will briefly explain what they do/how they work by showing what some adjustments to these curves looks like.

Red curve – here is our starting point

Dragging the curve to the left will introduce more red into the image

Dragging it back to the right will take out red (the gif will become more cyan)

Green curves: this is our starting point

Dragging the green curve to the left will add more green to the image

Dragging it to the right will take green out (adding pink/magenta)

So after I am happy I have coloured the image in curves If I want the gif to be a little brighter I go back to the main RBG Curves screen and drag the white arrow a little up to the left to add some additional brightness

After colouring with Curves I add in a Vibrance layer (highlighted adjustment layer)

Typically I set the vibrance somewhere between 50 and 60.

This is what the gif looks like now:

At this point I also have another quick look at the gif and see if I think I need to go back into curves and tweak the colouring a bit and add a bit of extra brightness. When I add in the Vibrance I find it easier to see if there is any underylying colours I want to go back and neutralise/adjust in my curves layer again.

This is what I end up with after making my adjustments post vibrance layer:

Another step I do sometimes is grabbing the black slider on curves and dragging it just a little bit to the right to add some depth and contrast to the gif. As s2 of hsmtmts is really dark I didn’t do it for this gif because I don’t think it needs it. But I will show an example of what this might look like:

This is basically it for my basic colouring. Of course there are a lot of different steps to making my colourful gifsets, but this is just a basic tutorial for the way I gif standard scenes so I will move on to subtitling gifs.

8. CAPTIONS

My go to subtitle font is Arial Rounded MT Bold. I have Faux Italic and Faux Bold Selected for this. I like bigger font sizes because I have bad eyesight so usually I will opt between 20 – 24 pt font size

I click the T button to add text then I type out my caption.

Obviously we don’t want our text here so I align it to the bottom and centre of the gif I do this by first selecting the move tool then going ctrl + a (this selects our gif as the boundary for our alignment). You will know this is done based on the border that comes around the gif (also please ignore that drop shadow and outline settings have already been applied here lol – I added this in because I forgot to screen cap/ explain this part initially)

Then I align my text using the following menu buttons:

Next I Ctrl +D to remove the selection (you need to do this to be able to nudge your text up for the next step). This is the result of the alignment:

Now I nudge the caption up by selecting the text layer and pushing ctrl + shift + up

This is the result:

This looks ok, but I always add an outline and dropshadow to make the text more readable. To do this I go into the blending options for the text layer. You can do this by right clicking the layer and selecting blending options or by double clicking the layer (but not on the text).

First I add Stroke with these settings

Then I add Drop Shadow with these settings:

9. SAVING GIFS

To save your file use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S to open the save for web settings. You will get a screen like this. The settings shown in this screen are my typical save settings (except it should say ‘Forever’ on looping options)

However, Tumblr’s gif limit is 10mb so the size of this gif is too big to upload (it is nearly 12 mb) so we have to go back in the timeline to shorten the gif a bit so we can upload it to tumblr.

I do this by dragging the red preview thingy (idk what else to call it) around till I find a point where I feel the gif has a natural end. Then I grab the timeline bar thingy (idk what it’s called but the silver gray bar at the end of the gif) to the red bar to shorten the gif.

Now press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S again to save your gif and make sure you set the Looping Option to ‘Forever’. Sometimes I have to shorten the gif a few times to get it under 10mb - but luckily I got it first go this time :)

Now your gif is saved but there is still one step left to do. Photoshop has a glitch where it automatically sets gif speed to 0.7 after saving from the timeline function – we don’t want that! The gifs look very slow and are not very smooth.

So what we do is we open the gif that we just saved and this will open in the frame format. All we have to do is select all frames and set the gif speed to 0.5 – I also have this in my action so I go back to the actions and highlight the line that says ‘set frame speed’ and play the action through

Then we just save the gif again as we just did 😊

This is the end result:

and what the gif looks like without any colouring or text:

One other helpful tip:

If you are giffing from the same scene you can do your colouring and text manually as per the tutorial on the first gif for the set and then drag what you did across to the second (after cropping, resizing and animating it). All you need to do is drag the colouring outside to a different window then highlight your adjustment layers + text and drag them to the new canvas off of the gif (If you drag it on top of the gif it will place it where you put it. Make sure to go off the canvas to so it will keep you positioning/alignment of the text you made 😊)

Basically - you drag the text, curves, vibrance (and any other layers you need) to the gray area of your photoshop document and your colouring will be applied and your text will be placed in the same position as your source doc.

Ok so that is my super basic gif tutorial - if anyone has any questions feel free to ask!

#hsmtmtsedit #*mine #request #gif tutorial #resources #ps help #photoshop tutorial #usergif #allresources #yeahps #completeresources #resourcemarket #dailyresources #userelsbeth #usersavana #useraurore #userrobin #usersole #uservalentina #tuserheidi #okkk so this is kind of a weird choice of gif for the tutorial but I just followed my process as I made a gif request this morning #plus I do feel like its a really ugly screenshot so shows the results of the colouring quite well #but anyway i hope this helps someone

[hurlumerlu]

miw/neo/shin for the ship ask ?

Well obviously you can guess that I love them, I haven't been subtle about it (also thank you for diving in the tag and providing me with good gifsets u.u) I love them individually - though Miw's the best and the guys are both sometimes irritating in their own way, you can't change my mind - and I love them as a trio, but I also love how they (still as a trio) interract with other characters in universe and narratively, and I love every single side of their triangle, though again : Miw & Shin have such a fun and surprisingly meaty dynamic, it's definitely my favourite out of the three.

On that subject, it is really nice to see a polyamorous triad that isn't a perfect triangle but where the non-romantic side is given (roughly) as much weight as the romantic ones. Neo isn't here when Miw and Shin meet, and something sparks without him. There's this shift, in their first bedroom scene, where Miw is bringing forth this cute and nice persona but respond to Shin's attempt at sincerity by deciding that putting her more abrasive self forward is a risk worth taking, and it's pretty pivotal ? After that Shin trusts her even when it's... pretty obvious she's lying, and she reciprocate by simply wanting to spend time with him without expecting anything from him. Like, their friendship started before The Clusterfuck, it could have blossomed on it's own, and it is important from that point on (Shin #1 Miw defender).

That being said, I also enjoy having a f/m/m polycule where the woman isn't the arrow's head. I feel like the very few stories who depict this kind of situations tend to rely on the men being bro but desiring the same woman in a weird attempt to, idk, retain some heterosexuality ? Not that it works. But here it feels like they went out of their way to avoid that, and I am here for it. Everyone gets their turn in the middle, but Neo is the clear linchpin of the throuple. Remove him and they fall appart, because of their respective insecurities. "It's time for this movie to end", say Miw, because why would she saddle the rich boy with her trashy mess ? and Shin doesn't object because why would he bother this cool girl that his crush loves more than him ? The three of them are stupidly self-sacrificial in different ways. But yeah, it's Neo's belief that when it comes to love they are allowed to have it all that keeps them together and it's just sweet.

Speaking of insecurities, I appreciate that it does actually take more than them fucking once for their relationship to be all smooth sailing, and that most of their hangs-up are pretty realistic results of, uh, living in our world. Like, Miw & Neo's poverty and their complicated relationship re: sex-work that they keep throwing in each other's face (Neo straight up calling Miw a whore, Miw arguing that Neo's a bad romantic prospect because he's poor and vulgar and uneducated) ? And you cannot convince me that Shin's conviction that he's just not as important to them as they are to him is partly from experiencing homophobia and seeing himself as the gay option vs Miw/Neo as the normal path anyone would want to take. I mean obviously gangster dad is the biggest obstacle in their path but I like that they also face internal ones. I'm often frustrated by the way polyamory is sometimes presented as the solution to love triangles (especially in fandom spaces) because imo, the neat narrative thing an OT3 does isn't that it solves the problem, but that it creates different ones. The show does it beautifully.

On a more, idk, bird-eyed view perspective ? I greatly enjoy just watching them blaze accross Thailand ruining lives without meaning to. The Mae/Phon/Ter mirrorverse doomed trio, Neo's boss, that guy Oat, the hotel manager and her family, Neo's brother, Luang I guess, even arguably Vanika... never has a polycule been such an ill-omen. Incredible Natural Disaster Energy. Three will be free and yes that is a threat.

UGH there was something else I wanted to talk about but I forgot what it was, I didn't expect this to get this long and also I'm sick and my brain isn't working super well right now. Anyway : never forget Neo fucked the step-son right after the step-mom. Or that time when Miw flirted with Neo's brother, while Neo watched them with jealousy, while Shin watched HIM with jealousy. Terrible work, team, eat some pot-brownies and then hit the showers.

#congrats to PP for not only surviving the miw/neo/shin typhoon but getting a sugar daddy out of it #3 will be free

[maya-matlin]

Hi! I’d love to hear your view on Julian and Brulian? Like other people have pointed out, he had a whole different personality initially before they decided to lean into his dorky side. But even when they wisely tried to make him adorkable, there’s just something about him I don’t fully love and trust—maybe it’s the actor’s line deliveries, or the way even as an adult he’s so fixated with a group of high schoolers from a school he didn’t even attend (a movie and then a documentary in which he inserts himself lol?!), or just how he he seemed less of a real character than just a love interest for Brooke. And honestly I thought he had more chemistry with Alex! I love the idea of Brooke with a sweet but strong dork, but as much as I like some brulian gifsets, when I actually watch their scenes they just don’t click for me. I hope this makes sense!

I like Julian fine. He wasn't one of my favorite characters, but I thought he mostly fit into later seasons OTH. But I have to admit that there were several occasions where I would compare him to Lucas. It wasn't just within his relationship with Brooke. Julian was friends with Nathan, close with Jamie (even making him his best man!), was involved with both of Lucas's main love interests and like Lucas, created media. Even though Clay was technically Lucas's replacement, Julian was the one primarily serving that role. His characterization was kind of all over the place. Like you said, Julian literally changed personalities based on the season. I'm not sure if it was a deliberate shift in the writing or if Julian's personality changed because of Austin Nichols. I have no insight on this. I haven't watched a single interview with Austin and have zero behind the scenes tea other than he dated Sophia for years.

In terms of weak performances, the worst was by far in season 9 when Julian fell into a dark hole after leaving his son in the hot car. I wasn't at all sold on the angst or Julian's pain. Julian was just selfishly throwing himself into danger and inserting himself into Nathan's kidnapping arc just to make himself feel less guilty. It didn't suit him. This is a perfect example of comparing Julian to Lucas. I completely understand that the Lucas/Dan history meant the two teaming up was highly unlikely, but Chad 100% could have pulled off the tough guy stuff in that context. Then at the very end of the series, Julian essentially replaces Lucas when he writes HIMSELF into the story of Lucas's high school life, stealing the moment where he makes the winning shot at the state championship. I mean, it was probably just Mark Schwahn's petty bullshit, but still.

LOL yeah. Looking back, Julian's introduction was kind of sketchy. To a degree, I think that was intentional. Julian showing up as Peyton's jilted ex was a misdirect. We were meant to think he was going to cause trouble for Lucas and Peyton only for him to end up with Brooke instead. So with that knowledge, it turns out Julian decided to read Lucas's book and, like the entire world apparently, realized it was the greatest story ever told and became personally invested.

You're making complete sense! I feel the same way. I'm aware Julian is a good man and was a loving, devoted husband to Brooke, but I just don't feel it. The actors were doing everything right and the writing was solid, but there's just no passion. It's nice, but it's not particularly exciting. I'm happy for Brooke, but my feelings don't go beyond that. When it comes to Julian/Alex, I pretty much agree. I'm mostly glad they never got together because their friendship was so good and genuine that it didn't need to be muddled up with relationship drama. But at the same time, they pulled me in far more than Brooke and Julian ever did.

My stance is pretty much that it should have been Brucas together with Naley in the final episode. Julian was only in Tree Hill for Brooke. Peyton wanted out of her hometown, even attempting to leave multiple times to go to Jake, and really only came back for Lucas. Both Brooke and Lucas had a lot of love and nostalgia for their small town and seemed truly happy returning to it after college. It just makes sense.

#Anonymous #Ignore my cringy pro Brucas paragraph even though I stand by it

[storytime-reviews]

Do Revenge Movie Review

A dethroned queen bee at a posh private high school strikes a secret deal with an unassuming new student to exact revenge on each other's enemies. 

It’s actually somewhat difficult sitting down to write a review about this film, because I loved everything about it and want to just shout it from the rooftops. You could say I am obsessed.

Do Revenge is interesting because it’s a dark teen comedy, yet full of pastel aesthetics. It looks absolutely gorgeous, the costumes are amazing (albeit very wacky and not at all like anything anyone I know would ever wear) and the song choices fit perfectly in each scene. All in all, this film is really just a vibe, and I enjoyed myself from beginning to end. Is it often crazy and over the top? Yes. But Do Revenge works precisely because it simultaneously doesn’t take it itself too seriously, yet is a well crafted and thought through narrative.

This review contains some spoilers

Drea (Camila Mendes) finds herself slipping down the social ladder at school when her boyfriend leaks a private video she made for him. With no one to turn to for support when her friends turn their backs on her, she finds herself becoming friends with the new girl, Eleanor (Maya Hawke). Eleanor is desperate to get revenge on the girl who outed her and labeled her a predator when they were young. The two girls form an unlikely friendship behind the scenes, in an attempt to exact revenge for each other. Of course shenanigans follow, and their plans inevitably go off the rails.

Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke have so much chemistry; whether you see their characters as platonic or romantic soulmates, there is clearly a deep connection between them. I love how over-dramatised so much of this narrative is, yet it’s also grounded in the slowly developing friendship between the two girls. I just absolutely loved watching these two girls protect each other and go absolutely feral in order to exact revenge, there was nothing more entertaining than watching them scheming and putting their plans into action.

I loved all of the sly looks at each other as they continued to pretend they barely knew each other, and the ways in which they would comfort each other. Their dynamic works so well because they are both so messed up, they don’t even care about all of the collateral damage in their attempts to destroy their enemies. Yes, their dynamic is fucked up, and yes so are their actions towards others, and yet you cannot help not only completely sympathise with them, but also feel the need to encourage them to be worse, to do worse. Even when they fuck each other over, you know that they deserve to be together, that this is where the narrative needs to end, and you cannot help but be glad they got the story right.

I honestly did not see that plot twist coming, but it made complete sense. From the beginning, if you look carefully, Eleanor’s true character is foreshadowed. The very day the film came out I already saw multiple gifsets putting it all together. When Drea says, ‘I like you Eleanor, you’re just like me’ she didn’t realise how right she was. Then there’s the fact that Drea says narcissists don’t realise they’re being played, which Eleanor throws back in her face once she realises the truth.

Yet, at the same time, they both acknowledge that they felt their happiest when with each other. Neither of them felt good with their attempts to destroy the other. They really are fucked up soulmates. And that’s what makes their dynamic so enjoyable. They are so similar, so messed up in the same way, that it is a true joy to watch them together. There’s no one-sided toxic angle to this relationship. I kind of love how full circle it is, that Drea betrays and ruins Eleanor when they are young, and therefore influences who she becomes.

You have to commend the writers and directors for putting together a cohesive, enjoyable revenge plot, whilst at the same time creating this really messed up dynamic that works so brilliantly. They both hurt each other so deeply, they hate each other but are also best friends. They ruined each other’s lives, but they only feel happy around each other. They don’t want to hurt each other anymore.

Do Revenge works from beginning to end because it’s a carefully constructed film wherein the plot points and twists make sense, and the characters have so much chemistry. It’s just so much fun to watch them destroy lives together. That’s why it’s such a good film, it’s consistently fun, consistently good, without being too serious. And it’s definitely worth a re-watch.

#do revenge #do revenge netflix #camila mendes #maya hawke #jennifer kaytin robinson #drea #eleanor #movie review

[number5theboy]

41, 28, 11, 1

What are your top 3 favorite sets you’ve made?

Okay, I feel like I've answered this quite recently, but to play along.

Five as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: This is a new one, and it's really dear to my heart. Because I'm me, I really love all the literary reference the writing tosses at Five (....with varying subtlety. this one was not subtle.), and this was a kind of gifset I don't usually do because it takes me a long, long time. But it turned out really pretty, with a nice layout and colouring. I think it's the first gifset I ever drafted that, once finished, made me smile at my own work. I'm really, really proud of this one.

Allison & Five: I'm salty that it's been three seasons and this gifset I made that cut them together to actually talk to each other, with dialogue adapted from the comics, is still more than they've talked in the show. I don't understand the show's unwillingness to have these two interact, I really don't. Which is why I love this gifset, and I'm quite proud of how I made different scenes look like they could be the same one, it was a fiddly one with colours.

Five in the show and Five in the comics: I think I will always love this gifset. I'm actually currently working on either a part two or just a complete remake of this with more instances that parallel the two versions of Five. But as I have made clear before, I love Aidan Gallagher's physical acting, and getting to connect that back to the original comic version is soooooo fun. Some good fucking casting right there.

What is that one set you made that just won’t die?

My tribute to the high numbers, the lost Hargreeves, the last set I made before S2 dropped. That really spoke to people, and every few weeks I get a little influx of notes and people going 'how dare you op' in the tags, which, as you surely know, is one of the biggest compliments a gifmaker can receive.

Have you ever posted a set, regretted it and immediately deleted it?

I have not, actually! I spend a long time giffing, so y'all get everything I make, even if it flops.

What is your least favorite part about your gif making process?

Fucking sharpening lmaooo. I'm using an oldass version of Photoshop Elements (Elements!!! The thing you use for photos, not even gifs!!!!! If I click on an explanation link, it sends me to an expired page on a browser that literally has been taken down!!!!), and so I sharpen every single image by hand. Yup. I really do that with my life.

#Replies #viktorhargreeves #CJ #thanks dear!!!

[hado-31-shakkaho]

i really can't stop thinking about ep 211 & tiny nanao & also lisa and kyoraku

i haven't made a tumblr post in a long time but i read a really really good nemu/nanao fic today (the only one in the ao3 tag?! i can't believe it but also, i can. they're both kind of side characters aren't they.) and i also saw a gifset that reminded me of Tiny Nanao so i've been thinking about that scene. you know those three minutes of ep 211, during the flashback/pendulum arc, where kyoraku returns to the eighth division barracks and nanao is there with a book and she's asking where lisa is...

it just! it makes me feel insane! the shot of kyoraku looking away when he says lisa is on an important mission, the fact that he's the one who volunteered her for it, the way that he can't meet nanao's eyes when he says "it's okay. she'll be back by dawn, i'm sure".

AND THEN THE FUCKIGN... THE ARC OF BLOOD AGAINST THE MOON HE WAS GAZING AT... THE WAY THE MUSIC STOPS AND WE GET BACK TO THE BATTLE... it just fucks me up! the song is called "here to stay"!!! it really ruins me!!!!!!! it lives in my head rent free!!! thinking about how the last words he had with lisa were him asking her to go in the place of the head of the kido corps, the little exchange of "can i count on you?" "of course!" "then, if you would, please" (ja, yoroshiku). how she left immediately to join the team and then! they did not see each other! for a hundred years!!!!! do you ever think about how she's the only visored who had something personal to say to a shinigami when the visored appeared in FKT, do you ever think about how both of them greet each other with actions and words that say, so clearly, i remember what kind of person you are, i remember you, i haven't forgotten. she yells at him to stop playing dead and he makes one of his usual playboy comments about how she's gotten more beautiful since she last saw him!!! lisa won't say anything more sentimental than "stay there and rest, i'm going to show you how much stronger i've become". and then AFTER she turns away kyoraku calls out to her and says "lisa-chan, i'm glad you're well". i think that in all his time serving as captain he must have found ways to deal with the death and loss inherent to the position, to the whole organization. he had to have found ways to grieve and cope and then move on or at least keep going, especially since as a captain a good deal of those were his fault. i really read that "i'm glad you're well" as like... an admission of responsibility and guilt about something he's had to carry with him for a hundred years. a hundred years! he sent his lieutenant off to what must have been her death and he just had to live with that! it wasn't even that she was assigned to it from on high, he sent her in someone else's place, and she never came back!

but then she calls him an idiot, in a way that really really sounds to me like something she's used to saying, and goes off to fight. it sounds so much like banter, like the way nanao talks to kyoraku now. and after she's flash stepped away he agrees with her.

there's just! i feel like it's maybe not the most intentional parallel, having a tiny meaningful exchange before lisa heads off to a fight that she takes because of kyoraku, but that little snippet of conversation feels like it at least echoes an old dynamic. "i'm glad you're well" "idiot" isn't something strangers can say to each other!!! (though i wouldn't put it past lisa to kick a stranger across a street.)

but at the same time that simple exchange sounds so... layered. he's glad she's been doing well, and he expresses it, and he does so sincerely. he's not saying anything flippant like "oh you've been up to a lot in the past hundred years" or anything like that. and i really wouldn't put it past kyoraku to sit there and joke a bit with his lieutenant, just in general, you know? but he doesn't. he takes a moment and says so sincerely, so genuinely, i'm glad you're okay. to me it sounds like he's also accepting responsibility for, you know, being the reason she might have not been okay that whole time. for sending her off to a horrifying mission where she got hollowfied and cast out of soul society and had to go into hiding in the human world.

and then she calls him an idiot. i feel like forgiveness is too strong or too direct a word, but it has a similar undertone to what i read into that. she knows he was the one who sent her to that battlefield a hundred years ago, and she hears him accepting that and maybe implying an apology for it, and she says you idiot. not forgiveness, because it might not be that there's something for her to forgive - the gotei 13 are still a military organization, you know? and she was a lieutenant and he was her captain and he sent her on a mission, the way captains do - but she knows he's being a sentimental old fool and taking that burden on himself, and in reply she wants to emphasize the "fool" part.

and she steps away back to the fight and he sits there, watching her go, and agrees with her.

anyway that scene with nanao asking in her tiny baby voice where lisa is and kyoraku not being able to make eye contact with her even as he's reassuring her and telling her lisa will come back for sure and the way it cuts back to the doomed fight. the way the song, which is called Here to Stay, cuts out on the "i'm sure". it gets me! it really does!!!!!

#h31s post tag #if anyone wants to look this up: the dispatch to mission scene is in episode 210 / chapter -102 / turn back the pendulum 7 #the tiny nanao scene is in episode 211 / chapter -100 / turn back the pendulum 9 #and the reunion scene is in episode 279 / chapter 365 #just in case anyone wants to suffer emotional damage with me #you know!!! just in case!!! #bleach #lisa yadomaru #nanao ise #shunsui kyoraku

[novelconcepts]

I love your filling in of the moonflower scene. Just the tenderness of it all 🥺

Do you think you might write a short piece about Dani finding the first grey in Jamie‘s hair in the future? Every time I see the gifsets of Jamie‘s (very sexy) grey strands I have to think about Dani‘s possible reaction

Jamie doesn’t tend to notice these things--little changes in her own appearance, little alterations made by the simple passage of time. Her attention, she scoffs when Dani laughs over her failing to pick up on a burr caught in her hair after a trip to the park, is better suited to other things. “World’s big,” she says, tilting her head to allow Dani to comb the remnants of whatever tree she’d walked beneath from her curls. “Why should I go wasting time starin’ at my own damn face?”

“Because it’s a good face,” Dani tells her. She doesn’t add that Jamie’s face, like everything about her, makes more sense than the rest of the world. That nothing about Jamie seems to come out of nowhere--every scrape and scar is accounted for with a story, every wrinkle turned out from the edge of her lips or around her eyes sparked by the familiarity of her frown, the inevitability of her smile. Everything about Jamie can be traced back to the honesty of time spent in the sun, or injuries incurred at work, or letting another year stroke its fingers across her skin. 

She notices the first gray hair maybe five years in. They’re on a camping trip, small tent pitched just upshore of a gently lapping brook; Jamie, crouched beside the water to inspect a turtle, looks up with a grin, and Dani notes a flash of silver at the crown of her head.

She doesn’t point it out. It’s too easy to anticipate Jamie’s amused drawl: “Got a gorgeous beast right here, and you’re worried about my hair?” She tucks the knowledge safely away, entertained by the idea that Jamie is carrying a secret upon her own head and has no idea.

She says nothing, but her fingers seek out the unexpected silver the next time Jamie comes close enough. She trails her hand through rumpled hair, watching the familiar warmth of brown cascade across her skin, pleased to find several more bursts of light wound in among the dark.

“What?” Jamie asks, smile crooking the way it always does when she senses Dani is about to poke fun. “Bein’ a weirdo again.”

“Am not,” Dani replies, and kisses her. 

It becomes a bit of a private game, an amusing turn of events: Jamie, the most naturally-observant human being in the world, has absolutely no idea she’s shot through with unexpected arcs of silver. No idea at all. At first, Dani thinks she’s intentionally ignoring the color leaching out of her hair; a flash of memory spirals back, Judy plucking what she called my little secret out by the strand and holding a finger to her lips as she reached for a box of red dye. Heavy maintenance is very much not Jamie’s speed, but maybe turning her cheek and feigning ignorance achieves the same goal.

A month goes by. A year. They’re turning up on their own time, these pops of colorless strands standing stark against dark waves, and Dani takes it upon herself to brush her fingers across each one she finds. She likes very much the depth they bring to Jamie’s hair, the way the sun catches a little differently when she turns her head. Likes the knowledge that each strand is a stamp of memory--proof of time spent. 

Likes, most of all, that Jamie legitimately seems to have no idea. Jamie, who tugs a black elastic band off her wrist with her teeth, raking the messy tumble out of her eyes, perpetually annoyed with the curls that always seem to evade her hands. Jamie, who spends hours with a book in one hand and Dani’s hair sifting through her fingers, and still has absolutely no clue what’s happening on her own head.

“You’ve never cared, have you?” Dani asks one afternoon, watching Jamie sort through their spectacular collection of cassette tapes, little plastic cases clicking comfortably to break up the quiet. Jamie, cross-legged on the living room rug with Survivor’s Vital Signs in one hand and REO Speedwagon’s Hi Infidelity in the other, raises her eyebrows.

“Seemed silly to go alphabetical while they were multiplying like fuckin’ bunnies, but now we’ve slowed down a little--”

“About looks,” Dani corrects. She’s hanging half off the couch, the tips of her fingers brushing Jamie’s knee. Life has been getting less predictable lately, messier around the edges; she looks into mirrors with breath held tight in her lungs, uncertain of what will look back. Touching Jamie has become less about habit and more a matter of lifeline. “You’ve never cared about how you look. Maybe the only woman I’ve ever known to say that.”

“I care,” Jamie says, with very little defensiveness. It is astonishing sometimes, looking back at the woman she’d met in that manor kitchen, how little defense Jamie seems to have for her these days. Questions are met in good faith, answered in kind, like Jamie knows there’s nothing Dani could ask that would intentionally bear teeth. “Care when I need to.”

“Like when?”

“At the shop,” Jamie says, tossing aside a Paul Simon cassette with a wrinkle of her nose. She finds Pat Benatar instead, sets it in the pile between The Beatles and Blondie. “Always look professional, don’t I?”

“But you don’t like--think about it? What you’ll look like in twenty years? Or fifty?”

“Fifty, Christ.” Jamie rolls back her head, grinning. “Be a hell of a thing, stacking fifty more years on. What d’you think you’ll look like in fifty years, mm?”

Dani doesn’t answer. It’s too early to tell what the smudged face in the mirror might mean--too early to panic--but the idea of fifty years more with Jamie seems terrifyingly unlikely. 

“Anyway.” Seeming to sense her unease, Jamie rocks up onto her knees, awkwardly shifting across the rug to lean against the couch. She braces a hand behind Dani’s head, her eyebrow arched. “You tryin’ to say I don’t pay enough attention to my looks? I don’t scrub up enough for you, is that it?”

Her fingers brush Dani’s ribs, digging in just hard enough to tickle. Dani squirms, laughter burbling out against Jamie’s neck. 

She doesn’t bring it up again, preferring the secret of Jamie’s slowly graying hair held within her own heart. The threads are becoming more insistent as the years drift by, joining tiny lines etched into Jamie’s skin. Her hands, put through so much work, are comfortably worn at knuckle and fingertip. Her smile pulls the skin around her eyes a little tighter as they celebrate eight years--nine--ten. 

She looks good with the extra age, Dani thinks. She wears it all so well, without pausing to prod at herself in the bathroom mirror; if she’s the least bit unnerved by the passage of time, she never lets it show. If Dani didn’t know better, she’d think Jamie never really looks at herself in the mirror at all. 

Too busy looking at me, she thinks, and tries not to ache at the idea that Jamie has forgotten herself beneath the need to keep her attention on what she considers more important things. Like watching for one of Dani’s moods to spike up in public. Like waiting for Dani’s shoulders to hunch against ghosts only she can see. 

Dani doesn’t look into mirrors herself much these days, either--though, every once in a while, a glimpse will sneak up. Just the barest flash of her own face in the passenger mirror of the car, or the idling bathwater. Sometimes--less and less often--the face waiting is even her own. 

It is so her own, those days, that Dani finds herself embracing a new concern. Something odd, something she’s only started to really see in recent memory. 

Jamie is starting to show her age, little by little. Not all at once, not in any way that is strange for a woman creeping into her forties--but the years are there, certainly, stamped gently into her skin. The years are threaded through her hair, these silver pops around which Dani’s hands seem to take on a mind of their own. There’s something wonderful, lively, even sexy about the way time is impacting Jamie--grounding her a little more every year, the natural wearing of all those hours hung like medals around her shoulders. 

Dani, catching sight of herself in the bathtub, can’t help but notice: no one could say the same for her. Not that time is beating away at her, not that time is turning her to stone before she’s ready--but that time appears to be doing nothing at all. Her eyes bear no extra marks, though she has spent just as much time as Jamie laughing, frowning, holding her breath as the world spins beneath her. Her hands look just the same as they had in 1987. 

Her hair is still stubbornly gold.

“Do you think it’s strange?” she whispers one night--not entirely sure if Jamie is even awake, not sure she can even bear the answer Jamie might give. 

“What is?”

She swallows hard, fingers carding gently through Jamie’s hair. The gray seems to gleam in the glow of the streetlamp through their window. 

“That I’m not...that I don’t look...”

Jamie pushes onto one elbow, peering at her in the dark. “You look like you,” she says, when Dani is unable to press on. “You look like Dani.”

She’s trying to answer the other question, Dani understands, the one being asked with greater frequency: am I here? am I me? what if I’m her, deep down, and have been all along? She shakes her head. 

“That’s not...I’m not...”

Jamie waits, brow knit the way it always has when she’s listening. Even when her expression smooths out into sleep, that small divot will remain, etched into her skin like a tattoo memorializing all these late-night conversations. Dani reaches up, presses her thumb gently to it now, her breath hitching when Jamie turns to kiss her palm. 

“It’s nothing,” she says. There’s no way to explain it without making Jamie worry more, worry again, lose yet more sleep watching for signs Dani is slipping away.

Jamie nods slowly, not quite believing, not quite daring to call out the lie. “All right,” she says, and the silver in her hair seems to burn, and Dani loves her enough to close her eyes and pretend everything is okay.

When morning comes, she wards off the thoughts. It’s easier, in daylight. Easier to turn her head, fix her eyes on Jamie, allow the familiarity of Jamie’s hands, smile, kiss sweep the fear back under the bed. The nights are long, the dark heavier than it has any right to be, but in sunlight, Jamie shines. The chain around her neck--the colors in her eyes--the silver shot through her hair. In sunshine, Jamie is the most alive any person can be.

And if she is, so must Dani be--because there is so much love in the way Jamie tips into her arms, so much affection in the sweep of her kiss, in the way she leads them around the kitchen in an impromptu waltz. Jamie, as always, burning away the shadows. 

Jamie, who dips her backward, drinking in her laughter with the biggest grin in the world. Who cuts her eyes to the right. Who tightens her mouth in surprise.

“Hang on,” she says, her hands still braced at Dani’s back and hip. “What the fuck is this?”

Dani’s heart gives a giant leap, her hands clutching at Jamie’s shirt for balance. This is it, she thinks. She can see her now. She can see her, not me, and it’s over, it’s all over, it’s--

“Dani.” Jamie is frowning, easing her back to her feet. She crouches down, gazing into the window of the oven. One hand rises to her head, her brow furrowed.

She sees her, Dani thinks, backing toward the sink. She sees her, and--

“Jesus, how long has my hair looked like that?” 

She blinks, shaking the panic away. “What?”

Jamie is looking at her, almost awestruck, her face clean and younger than usual with the last vestiges of sleep clinging to her eyes. “All that gray. Knew there were one or two, but--”

Dani is laughing. Leaning back against the counter, the mirth spilling out of her, she laughs. Jamie, straightening up with a low groan--her knees pop audibly, her head shaking--looks bewildered.

“Suppose you thought you’d just wait,” she says dryly, “and see if I ever noticed?”

Dani nods, cackling too hard to answer. It’s become so normal, counting the bright bursts amid Jaime’s natural hair color; she’s honestly forgotten Jamie ever didn’t have these silver sparks. Every inch of her, from the crow’s feet etched near her eyes to the tiny scars on her hands, is quite simply home. 

Jamie is plainly trying to look grumpy now, her hand tangling her hair. With Dani giggling like this, unable to catch her breath, she isn’t doing a very good job.

“Been this way a while?”

“Years,” Dani giggles. “Since I proposed. Before.”

Jamie rolls her eyes, slouching the two steps it takes to reach the counter and Dani’s shaking frame. “You,” she says in a mock-irritated tone, “are supposed to help with these things.”

“With what?” Dani brushes the hair back from her eyes. “You’re beautiful. And more than that, you’re...stately.”

“Stately,” Jamie repeats with a snort. “Haven’t heard that one. That’s a Hannah word, if ever there was one.”

They sober, just a little, the appropriate affection offered to memory. Jamie’s head bows against her own, her nose brushing Dani’s lightly. 

“I like it,” Dani says, her voice soft. “I like watching it happen. Like growing old...”

She trails off. She isn’t growing old, is the thing. Isn’t changing. Is as incontrovertible as a lake set into ancient grounds. She is not growing old at all.

Jamie’s fingers curl around her chin, tipping her head back. “Growing old together,” she says, firmly. Not denial, exactly--just certainty. Jamie, imposing her will on a world that tries so hard to have its own way with them both. 

“Growing old together,” Dani repeats, and even if it isn’t true in the strictest sense--even if it doesn’t look like it should--she knows Jamie believes it. Knows Jamie will fight tooth and nail to make the universe bend around her love. 

There are things, Jamie believes, that are natural. Organic. Exactly as they should be. There are things that can’t be changed by dreams, whims, magic spells. 

They will grow old together. That is, Jamie believes, the way the world works. The way it has always been and will always be. Jamie’s hair grows silver. Jamie’s skin etches with lines. Jamie’s hands are solid in her own, though she sometimes bends her fingers with a grimace, rubs her wrists when the weather angles toward snow. 

They will grow old together. For Jamie, there is simply no other consideration to be made.

“I like it,” Dani repeats, fingering the nearest strand of gray. “It’s distinguished.”

Jamie, shaking her head, is grinning as she leans in for a kiss.

#fanfiction #ficlet #the haunting of bly manor #the haunting of bly manor spoilers #dani x jamie #damie #I either post nothing for six days or multiple things at once #no middle ground we write erratically like kings #anyway: Jamie's silver hair is peak!Jamie I will hear no arguments

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 06 part two

(Masterpost)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Bathing Boy Beauties

So, now we and Wei Wuxian get to see Lan Wangji with his shirt off. Eventually Lan Wangji will realize that his brother set this up, and will think of some way to get back at him, possibly by spending three years being stubborn in a cave or maybe by chopping an arm off of someone his brother cares about. 

This is A+ Yibo fanservice but it's also a male-male version of a trope that's ubiquitous in c-drama, in which the male lead takes a bath and the female lead sees him. The purpose of the scene is almost always so a woman can look a man’s body over and decide, not to put too fine a point on it, whether she wants to fuck him. 

Examples:

The Pillow Book - “Which part of Shen Ye is better than me?”

Women’s sexual agency is not often at the forefront in c-dramas, but the bathtub scenes are an acknowledgement of the female gaze, and of male objects of desire being subject to evaluation & approval.

Tientsin Mystic is a show with a lot of muscley swimming in it, In case you’re looking for your next Netflix show. 

As a CGI artist I have to mention that water does not reflect or refract 100% of light. If you look at a naked dingle-having person in a bathtub full of clear water you will definitely be able to see their dingle. But C-drama water is magic and nothing is visible below the waterline, to the point that Bai Yu is modestly covering his thoracic surgery scar chest in Detective L while leaving his lower half uncovered.

Note: that caption isn’t fake; she is really saying this on her way out the door, after having a long chat with him in the bathroom. You can find the whole series on YouTube.

Seen in this context, The Untamed’s two bathing scenes are saying quite a lot. Wei Wuxian, being a boy, doesn’t display any female-encoded shyness or modesty, but he and his sword pause for a moment of admiration.

(more after the cut!)

16 years later, Lan Wangji will sit quietly in this pool and let Wei Wuxian examine his wet body thoroughly from multiple angles, in a more prolonged invocation of this C-drama mating ritual.

Carrying on - was Xiao Zhan supposed to kick his boot in the water like that? Because if not, he rolls with it like a champ.

Wei Wuxian starts trying to be direct with Lan Wangji, giving him the worst, most neg-filled compliment ever, bless his heart.  

Then he says that there are benefits to being his friend, and starts taking off his clothes.

Wei Wuxian here takes his first step into the bold new world of respecting Lan Wangji’s boundaries, asking Lan Wangji to stay and saying he will keep his clothes on. 

Lan Wangji actually does stay, so he's apparently not too angry with Wei Wuxian about the drinking. Wei Wuxian invites him to visit Lotus Pier sometime (see my gifset here), but the promise of lotus pods doesn’t impress him. Then Wei Wuxian tries to tell him that the Yunmeng chicks really knock me out, they leave the rest behind. This also doesn’t impress him. 

You could read this macking-on-ladies talk as a sign that Wei Wuxian is oblivious to LWJ's feelings for him. But I read it as a bisexual boy being horny on main with a boy he likes, not  understanding yet that some boys don’t share all of his turn-ons.

Lan Wangji is sort of mildly startled when Wei Wuxian disappears under the water. His eye makeup is good here, isn’t it?.

Ice Cave

They end up in an ice cave and both spend the rest of the episode showing how good they look with wet hair. 

When the guqin starts attacking, Lan Wangji is only mildly perturbed about Wei Wuxian getting his shit rocked over and over.

Eventually he sends Bichen to protect his very bedraggled date. Lan Wangji’s sword is faster than the speed of a very slow sound wave.

Beauty's where you find it not just where you bump and grind it 

Gusuship Down

I feel like there are a couple of things in this show that are so problematic the fandom has silently agreed to never discuss them. Well, I’m here to talk about this one:

There are rabbits in this ice cave and they are wearing headbands. HEADbands. On RABBits.  

EXCELLENT FUCKING QUESTION, LAN WANGJI

*deep breath*

Are these rabbits lineal Lan descendants? Who makes the headbands? How do they stay on because “headband” here means “glowing cloud on forehead” without any actual band.  When rabbit babies are born, how do they stay safe while they’re waiting for someone to make them baby-sized headbands? Do these rabbits adhere to the other 3499 Lan Clan principles or just the headband one? Is any ol' rabbit allowed to touch a rabbit’s headband or is it limited to parents and significant others and is that even relevant when presumably these bunnies are all fucking each other like...bunnies?

The characters are like “oh, the rabbits are wearing headbands; killer guqin problem solved.” And then they move right the fuck along with their lives and the rabbit headbands are never seen or discussed again and I just want a hit of whatever the author or creative team was smoking when they came up with this whole idea.

Headband Sharing

When Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji to hand over his headband, Lan Wangji understands his entire rabbit-based thought process without asking

Gen-X Joke Alert

Wei Wuxian is awfully impressed by this sword-recall trick, considering that he did it himself when they went to the lake.

I see you know your way around a sheath

Killer Guqin

When they approach the guqin I hope that the subtitles are mistranslated, because Wei Wuxian keeps promising not to touch it and then says he can't look at it without touching it. I'm not going to touch it, I just need to touch it. 

Lan Wangji is going to teach Wei Wuxian some goddamn boundaries no matter how many times he has to make him fondle his sword.

Nothing suggestive here

Lan Wangji sits down to play the guqin and immediately goes off into the ether where there are seagull noises and plenty of fans. This is either a state of pure bliss, or he just really likes seagulls.

Did Lan Wangji just have a stealth orgasm?

Speaking of getting off, get your ass off of my desk

The Yin Iron

Lan Wangji does some spirit whispering, and suddenly the cave starts yelling at them. A bunch of clans are chanting in unison about a plan, which is the cultivator version of a battle cry.

Lancestor Lan Yi shows up. She is elegant and has a combination of sweetness and gravity that is similar to Lan Xichen’s. And none of Lan Qiren’s douchiness.

Search Party

Lan Qiren is worried and Lan Xichen is worried and they have sent people to look for the boys. It's really too bad nobody around here knows magic.

All these powerful cultivators search for missing people by running around outdoors yelling for them. 

Yanli is excused from PE class because she’s not feeling well, so she sits on a rock in the woods instead of, you know, staying home in the first place. She gets bored sitting down and unwisely decides to walk two or three steps. Xuan Lu, seen here competing in a gymnastics event, gamely pretends she can’t climb a small rock. 

Yanli falls into Jin Zixuan's arms and they gaze at each other for a long heterosexual moment. 

No homosexual explanation possible

This means two things: 1. he isn't looking very hard for her brother if he's hanging out here catching wobbly girls 2. soulful longing looks from him ain't shit, because he's going to dump her in the next episode.

Lanny Granny

Lan Wangji intros himself to Lan Yi and does a full prostrate bow. Wei Wuxian does a standing bow since he's not a descendant, just a future in-law.

No I mean come on, HEADBANDS

Lan Gran explains the entire history of the yin iron. It's bad, it's full of resentful energy, no-one should use it. She’s going to dump it on a couple of 16 year old boys, one of whom has a woody for using resentful energy, because it’s destiny and her battery is about to run out. 

Props to the Prop Department; this thing does look pretty cool

Xue Chonghai was the most problematic cultivator back in the old days. He killed a lot of dudes and fed their resentment to...a turtle? To the disk? I don’t know; I literally am unable to pay attention when anyone is explaining the intricacies of the unobtanium Yin Iron. 

Anyway there’s a disk and it’s soaked up a lot of resentment.  

Using it makes people evil. Well except..clearly this dude started off evil, yeah? If he was feeding people to his turtle.

Side effects may include: being fucking crazy

Here Wei Wuxian brings out his "resentful energy is awesome" theory and has an experienced grown-up grand master tell him that she also thought this, and has spent 100 years locked in a cave with headband-wearing rabbits because she was super fucking wrong. Does this deter him? ...nope

Baoshan Sanren

Now she name checks Baoshan Sanren, and Wei Wuxian has a big reaction and Lan Wangji has a big noticing of Wei Wuxian’s reaction. He’s very attuned to Wei Wuxian’s emotional state, in the moments where WWX lets his actual feelings show through the sass and swagger.  

Lan Gran talks about her search for the Yin iron, and Lan Wangji wisely says, if you can't neutralize it, why look for it? And she says, I was filled with hubris just like ya boi Wei Wuxian.  Lan Wangji points out the exact same shit he will later point out to Wei Wuxian.

So now we have a parallel in which Lan Yi is just like Wei Wuxian and Baoshan Sanren is just like Lan Wangji, yeah? Which is kind of sweet; it shows how these types are drawn together and how your clan doesn't determine your personality. Also it shows how the Lan clan has room for an unorthodox clan leader. Also it shows how the Yin Iron causes some really bad breakups. 

These boys are standing on snow barefoot which has got to take a pretty high cultivation level. Look how short Lan Wangji is without his stilettos, aww.

Flashback to Baoshan Sanren, just long enough to appreciate how beautiful she is.

Did OP give up on recoloring that flashback-blue-hazed image and just start fucking around with random filters? Yes she did. 

We also get to see that Lan Yi and Lan Wangji have more common than just guqin, because they both like to solve problems by kicking them.  

So after breaking up with her girlfriend, Lan Gran became invisible in this cave for 100 years while trying to contain the Yin iron and put headbands on rabbits. 

Soundtrack: Vogue by Madonna Writing prompt: Watership Down rabbits meet Lan rabbits

Bonus extended bath clip:

Bai Yu, Detective L

#fytheuntamed #the untamed #wangxian #the untamed gifs #the untamed meta #the untamed stills #chen qing ling #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs #cdrama #tw:cussing #more cussing than usual #that is #this is so long I can no longer edit it to fix my typos #even in html editor it won't save #good lord #must have fewer thoughts from now on #if you make it to the end there's a bonus bath gif

[captainpikeachu]

I saw this gifset comparing Walker to Steve in a way that obviously is trying to show all the good things that Steve is that Walker is not, yet it is very misleading, ignores context, and even misrepresents scenes and characters, and I just really needed to talk about it, because while yes Walker and Steve have a lot that can be compared with each other, it irks me when people misrepresent the characters to do it.

1. Jumping on a grenade

This comparison I assume is to show that while Steve genuinely jumped on a grenade with his body thinking he would die, Walker is only doing it with a reinforced helmet and treats it as an exercise. I guess that makes Steve more heroic than Walker who is doing fake heroics? But this ignores the very fact that Walker is a three time Medal of Honor recipient, which means very clearly that Walker has genuinely put his life on the line in defense of others. He’s not just doing fake heroics, and using a reinforced helmet is not “fake heroics”, especially when in real life even a reinforced helmet would not ensure the person using it wouldn’t die - a real life Medal of Honor recipient actually died trying to cover a grenade blast with a reinforced helmet and his body

2. Fame, attention, and publicity

This comparison seems to paint the image that Walker is enjoying the fame and publicity and signing all the autographs while Steve is a lonely figure just painting on his own and away from the publicity. But this blatantly ignores the fact that we see Steve signing autographs and holding babies while taking pictures in the First Avenger film. Steve was uncomfortable with the fame, yes, but he eventually accepted that was part of the job. Walker is the same way. Literally seconds before we see him take the field for the interview, he expresses discomfort with all the publicity and attention, he just wants to do his job, like Steve did. We also see him in Episode 4 very clearly uncomfortable with the attention he gets after signing the autograph of a stranger out in public that as soon as the people turn to leave, his face changes to one of exhaustion and frustration, like he’s suffering from a migraine. Steve and Walker actually share very similar views on fame, they didn’t come into this for publicity and glory, they did it because they want to do their job and help people.

3. “I don’t like bullies”

This comparison I assume is to show that while Walker is hostile and a bully with his line telling Sam and Bucky to stay out of his way, Steve doesn’t like bullies and is kind-hearted. Yet this ignores the fact that in Episode 2, it’s actually Sam and Bucky who were hostile while Walker spends almost the entire episode trying to be cooperative and helpful and speak to them with respect even when they pointedly and blatantly disrespect him. If anything, Steve saying he doesn’t like bullies and doesn’t care where they’re from is more like a condemnation on Sam and Bucky than on Walker, because Sam and Bucky were the “bullies” in this situation and Walker was defending himself. Walker says this one line after spending the whole day being insulted and attacked, and he’s the “bully”? That’s a funny way of victim blaming.

4. Government vs. Freedom

This is the only comparison in this gifset that actually is a valid comparison, because Walker is very much an extension of the government he serves and is loyal to that institution, while Steve is a rebel and is loyal to an ideal rather an a government. But even that is something that Steve took a while to really take a stand on, remember the Steve that showed up in the Avengers movie was about following orders, and it took certain circumstances to make him realize that he has to change how he operates in this new environment. 

5. Asset vs. Friend

Even ignoring the fact that Walker is actually putting on a public showing to show how important Bucky is to the mission so that the cops can’t deny letting him go, this comparison is very misleading because Walker and Bucky aren’t friends because they literally just met while Steve has been friends with Bucky since childhood, so obviously their views on Bucky would differ. Not to mention Bucky literally just spent most of that episode insulting Walker and questioning his abilities, Bucky is hardly making a good first impression. 

-----------------------

Anyways, I’m not saying we can’t compare Steve and Walker, they share a lot of differences and similarities that we should compare. But at least do so honestly instead of being misleading and ignoring the canon and context.

#john walker #steve rogers #captain america #the falcon and the winter soldier #mcu #if we are going to do comparisons #lets do it fairly and with the right set of context and circumstances

[kbsd]

not sure if you’ve answered this before, but what’s your process look like when you make an amv? i’m just curious and in constant awe of ppl who can make videos like you do :)

hello all!!! i have answered this before and i have a vid help tag with other asks i’ve gotten about stuff like this! but i’ve gotten several more messages along these lines so i’m just going to answer a bunch of them together (under a cut since i love to ramble about editing lol). i do just wanna say i’m definitely not the authority on video editing and obv everyone has their own techniques!

edit: i just finished typing all this up and it’s SO long so sorry in advance LMAO god bless anyone who reads this entire thing

so i work in news tv and we have a very specific workflow for writing scripts, sourcing video, producing, and editing. i’ve just applied that to making amvs! for every video i make, i copy the song lyrics into a google doc and adjust them to match the song i’ve cut (i often will trim songs for time and/or content purposes). then i start planning! i’ll mark down what clip i want to use for each lyric next to that line, and any sound bites i want to use (with episode numbers!). i’ll color code between video and sound bites and lyrics, so my scripts end up looking something like this (for my honeybee amv):

doing the planning ahead of time makes everything much easier when it’s a video that spans the whole show or involves a lot of sourcing, like honeybee or sports analogies. that way when i get to the actual editing process, i already know what i’m going to do and have a game plan. for videos like happy ending or believe it or not, where i’m mainly just pulling from a few episodes, i can just plan it in my head as opposed to writing it all down, and produce as i edit. obviously i do make in-the-moment decisions while editing—sometimes a shot doesn’t work the way i thought it would, or i go where the video takes me—but planning ahead definitely helps. i know some people use spreadsheets as well, with columns for lyrics, video clips, and sound bites if applicable. once you find a system that works, it actually goes pretty quickly.

as for sourcing clips themselves/finding clips within episodes, i talked about that here and kind of here. the short version is that transcripts are a must, and the supernatural wiki is hugely helpful by cataloguing all the hugs, prayers, phone calls, etc. in the show. gifmakers that tag episode numbers on their posts are your friends. it gets easier the more video you make—that’s another huge reason i make the google docs for each video (even the ones i plan in my head, i end up going back and making a loose script with episode notes just for reference). if i can’t remember where something is but i know i used it in another video, i can easily reference past scripts!

i also cut all my videos in the same project in premiere pro, so i can flip between them easily. instead of checking a past script, i can just go to the video sequence itself and copy the clip i’m looking for! this was especially helpful when i match cut together the 5x18 and 4x22 wall slam shots for my bestie video, and then stole it from myself for honeybee hahaha. at any given time i have at least 8 sequences open:

because of the sheer volume of videos i make, it’s worth it for me to download the entire show—i have all 327 episodes in HD, plus deleted scenes. if you think you’re only going to make a few videos, i’d start with scene packs. you can usually just google “destiel [or whatever ship/character you’re looking for] scene packs” and there will be any number of ones you can download. if you need other specific scenes, you can always download/torrent individual episodes or screen record netflix (that’s what i did before i got HD download links). i’m happy to share my links if you DM, but be warned it’s a lot of disk space (about 500GB on my hard drive). someone also compiled every destiel scene, downloadable here.

having every episode already loaded in premiere for all my projects also makes it a lot easier to source clips. once i use a clip in a video, i’ll put a marker on the episode file, so that after a while i have most of the important scenes/lines marked to easily find them. to give you an idea, this is my episode file in premiere for 12x10 lily sunder has some regrets (markers at destiel scenes, the car fight, hot girl cas, etc.). markers are the green tabs along the bottom:

premiere also lets you color code and name markers, so ONE DAY i will go back and color code them all. the ones above are all the same color, but in a perfect world, i’d have a myraid—for destiel shots like hugs, touches, looks; for important pieces of dialogue; for action shots; etc. but for now this works ok for me, so that’s a project for another time!

between detailed scripts, one giant premiere project, markers, the wiki, and my own memory, i have so many points of reference that i can usually find any clip i need in about 2 minutes max. sound bites are often harder to start out, or tiny specific shots i haven’t used before, and that’s when i turn to tumblr gifsets or beloved mutuals to crowdsource. but if you’re as obsessive about marking/keeping neat scripts as i am, it gets easier and easier with every video you make. that’s part of why i’m able to cut videos together so quickly. (also i want to stress i do this for a living and have to produce/edit a new piece for my show every day so i’m used to it. and compared to constantly updating content/sources and news that changes every day, 327 highly documented episodes that never change are much easier to handle hahaha)

this is all great for me since i make so many videos and plan to continue doing so, but if you’re only making a few, this level of work isn’t worth it imo. really it’s all about developing a system that works for you. whatever you do with episodes/sourcing, though, i cannot recommend planning things out in a script ahead of time enough. 

everything i just mentioned is producing, though. for the editing process, i usually do it in this order:

music first. any parts i want to cut, i make sure it all sounds smooth

then soundbites. i usually try to weave them into the lyrics—i have characters talk in breaks between lines or instrumental sections as much as possible. i’ll sometimes go so far as looped/extending an intsrumental part to make room for the soundbite i want there lol. if i do have dialogue over a line, i do the sound mixing/levels at this point as well to make sure everything is audible/one doesn’t overpower the other. (also i always include the video that goes with these bites when i drop them in, and decide later if i want to show the character speaking or have other clips cover the dialogue)

once i have all the audio locked in, then i bring in all my other video clips. sometimes i edit completely chronologically, sometimes jumping from section to section—it depends on the song or how i’m feeling

double check sound mixing. i usually listen to my videos through a few times, with headphones and without to make sure it’ll sound good no matter how people watch it

once i have picture and audio lock, i go through and color correct my clips. i’m basic and just use lumetri color in premiere, and usually just play with brightness, saturation, temperature, and tint until i like it

render and export! :)

i always have several audio tracks, but i try to keep my video tracks condensed. i’ll drop clips on a V2 level, and edit a section there, and drop the whole chunk down to V1 so i know it’s finished. that way when i leave and come back i can know where i left off/what’s done/etc. to give you an idea, this is the timeline for my what the hell video:

i always render as H.264 with high bitrate, and make sure to check “render at maximum depth” and “use maximum render quality” for the best quality. i’m sorry, but i don’t know what the equivalent options are in final cut, imovie, kdenlive, etc. i post on youtube mostly so i don’t have to sacrifice quality, but usually just using a lower bitrate will get you under the tumblr file size limit and it’ll still look good.

as for the anon who asked about “polishing”: first of all, thank you!! second of all, it’s in the details. all of this is a matter of taste and my own insanity, but here are some little things i always try to do:

after i color correct, i blur out any credits from the starts of episodes. i use gaussian blur for this, but really any blur tool works

as much as possible, i avoid clips where we see a character’s mouth move but don’t hear the words. in tv/film we call it “lip flap” and i just think it looks messy. also i’m trained to avoid it at all costs at work hahaha. it’s more for serious videos that this matters a lot to me (e.g. i think i did a really good job eliminating lip flap in my happy ending amv)—for comedy videos i don’t sweat it as much

i put audio fades on the start and end of every single audio clip i use, even if i don’t think i need it, to make sure everything sounds smooth

i use markers for timing, especially in action-y videos like what the hell. i’ll put a marker on the clip i’m using at the exact moment a punch lands, and in the song on the beat. if i have the magnet/snap in timeline tool on i can just easily snap them together instead of having to spend time finagling it

this is such a small thing but i dip/cut to black for a tiny bit at the start and end of every video. this way if i post with tumblr video player, there’s black between the loops, and it gives you a beat before the video restarts. i do this even on videos i post on youtube, just because i think it looks nicer/more professional

this is 1,500 words so i’m going to stop myself before i pull something. if you have follow-up questions feel free to ask and i’ll continue to add them to the vid help tag, but any more questions about sourcing clips or my process in general i’ll just link this post going forward. anyone who made it this far, i am sending to a telepathic kiss. thank you for reading and happy editing!

#i typed this all up at 4am so i'm just scheduling it to post sometime today #ask #vid help

[coupsnim]

Here’s another ask game for caratblr! Assign your moots as seventeen comeback aesthetics (can include solos, OSTs, collabs, Japanese comebacks, etc) and say why you associate them with that aesthetic! Some can overlap too!

 this was harder and took me way more than expected ahah I decided to go through svt mvs and see if they reminded me of my mutuals, but there are a few songs that I couldn’t associate with anyone so I left them out 🙈

🌼 adore u ~ chey @soonhoonsol ↳ chey is one of the first people that I followed (and probably my first mutual) but this is not the only reason why I associate her with adore u. the song is fun and has a youthful vibe, which reminds me of her, but in the mv we also see a lot of scenes that are not linked to one another and that made me think of chey’s various interests and groups she likes ahah and of course adore u has a special place in every carat’s heart and so does chey (at least here on tumblr ahah)

🌼 mansae ~ cora @ohoshi ↳ I haven’t followed cora for a very long time, but as soon as I watched mansae I thought of her. mansae has the same youthful vibe as adore u but it’s also very energetic and when it hits the chorus it puts you automatically in a good mood, and this is what happens everytime I see cora’s tags under my posts. also her creations are always colourful just like the mv and the members’ hair for this comeback ahah

🌼 pretty u ~ lyns @kyeomshine ↳ I think lyns’ style fits pretty u the best. the mv is fun but it also has a romantic vibe, like one of those coming-of-age movies, which reminds me so much of her creations. moreover, they applied a sepia tone to the mv and whenever I think of sepia I think of lyns ahah

🌼 love letter ~ lee @uriboogyu ↳ love letter is a cute and fun mv, with bright and pastel colours, so when I watched it my mind went straight to the cutest person I follow. and that person is lee. she works so hard to bring new content and to engage with other people as well, her whole blog is like a love letter to svt.

🌼 very nice ~ yza @jonghan ↳ I think aju nice reflects a lot of my mutuals’ vibe, but when I watched the mv I immediately thought of yza. it’s just her and her 13 biases ahah (I know she says she has a bias line but no one actually believes her). the colours in the mv are bright and a bit more saturated compared to previous mvs, which reminds me of her gifs, and the song is fun and upbeat, just like her personality. I think yza fits perfectly with aju nice.

🌼 healing ~ mirelle @leechaerok ↳ to be honest, I don’t need to watch the mv to associate this song to mirelle. she is just such a nice presence on my dash, I’m happy to see her even when she doesn’t post about seventeen. what I like about her is her positivite attitude, her optimism, and the fact that she always has a nice word for everyone. every time I see one of her posts, I immediately feel at ease.

🌼 boomboom ~ emily @iiasha ↳ there are two main reasons why I thought of emily while watching boomboom: jun looks amazing and there’s a lot of technology involved ahah also the video starts out mysterious but then turns out to be funny and a bit silly (and super cool if we include the choreography) and I think this describes exactly how I see emily ahah

🌼 don’t wanna cry ~ carrie @art-hao ↳ don’t wanna cry is one of my favourite mv and I think it matches perfectly with carrie’s style. it’s simple but impactful, and the colour palette and colour grading are gorgeous and well thought in every scene, just like every single creation carrie has posted on tumblr.

🌼 change up ~ zai @icecreamscxups ↳ I don’t really know, maybe it’s because of her change up gifsets, but I immediately thought of zai as soon as I clicked on the mv. I just get change up vibes from her ahah

🌼 habit ~ oona @vernons ↳ oona is a quiet and peaceful but constant presence on my dashboard, she’s seems chill and I like when she shares her other interests outside seventeen. she’s that calm mutual who creates the perfect balance with the more chaotic ones, that’s why I associate her with habit.

🌼 clap ~ dasha @smallkore ↳ clap is a really creative and fun mv and I immediately associated it with all dasha’s gfx. she is one of my favourite content creator, all her ideas are so original and well executed, just like clap mv. I hope she’ll come back soon because I really miss her content!

🌼 thanks ~ kale @choibeomgyus ↳ thanks is another one of my favourite mv, I really love the storyline and the atmosphere. I actually don’t know why I thought of kale as I watched it, but I think her style (which I adore) fits with thanks general vibe.

🌼 just do it ~ isa @kwanies ↳ just do it doesn’t really have an official mv, but I still wanted to include it because I think the lyrics are perfect for isa! I can’t really explain further, as I don’t really know her, but that’s the vibe I get from her ahah

🌼 oh my ~ sofi @scoups ↳ the first thing I associate with oh my is summer, and that’s something that reminds me of sofi’s aesthetic as well. seeing her colourful and bright posts makes me as happy as listening to oh my!

🌼 holiday ~ sarah @dkymm ↳ another song that is perfect for summer (and one of my favourite song ever). I think that sarah fits holiday‘s concept the best, even though I can’t really explain why. maybe it’s because I associate dokyeom stan with bright songs, or maybe it’s just the vibe I get from her, laid back and funny without trying too hard.

🌼 home ~ genesis @shineesbag ↳ I don’t think home concept fits genesis, but she’s still the first person that I thought of when I watched the mv. she’s the only one out of all my mutuals that follows all my blogs (thank you!) and we like more or less the same groups/people, so I just feel really comfortable when I see her on my dash (although we never actually talked). she’s a reassuring presence on my dash and one of my favourite blogs, just like home is one of my favoutie songs.

🌼 hit ~ anna @haniehae ↳ the reason why I associate anna with hit is quite obvious: anna is a dancer and hit has probably the hardest choreography. at first I thought that she would fit don’t wanna cry as well, since the choreography for that song is amazing, but I also feel that hit reflects more her style. I have two left feet, so I admire people that can dance, and anna dances very well!

🌼 fallin’ flower ~ célia @delicatecy and mary @efflorescing-mary ↳ the first person I associate with my all time favourite svt concept is célia (who is the first person I followed on this blog). her style is so elegant, so classy, so (as her url says) delicate. I love it as much as I love fallin’ flower, she is one of my favourite content creator and although she’s not active, I sometimes go on her blog to have a look at all her masterpieces. ↳ the second person I associate with this concept is mary. fallin’ flower is pure poetry, so of course it reminds me of her and her poems!

🌼 snap shoot ~ rhys @heartgyus ↳ me and rhys have been mutuals for less than a month, so I can’t say that I really know her. but I often see her on my dash and I think her personality fits snap shoot, both the song and the mv. also since the video was made by mingyu, my mind probably made a link between the two ahah

🌼 my my ~ maddie @kyeomblr ↳ another personal favourite, my my is a cute and bright song with a cute and bright mv. as I said, I tend to associate dokyeom stan to this kind of songs and I think this concept fits maddie! (I saw it was your birthday yesterday, so happy belated birthday!)

🌼 left and right ~ dreamy @scoupsy ↳ as soon as I watched left and right, dreamy was the first person that came to my mind. not only the concept reminds me of her style, but the song reflects her personality too I think. also left and right is coups’ first comeback after hiatus, so it holds a special place in my heart.

🌼 24h ~ zay @dk-s ↳ zay’s style and her colouring in particular really remind me of 24h. it’s dark without being too dark (like fear, for instance) and it’s quite elegant. also black and red is a colour scheme I associate with zay in general, so the outfits svt wore in the dance scene instantly made me think of her.

🌼 side by side ~ alicia @myungho ↳ that’s cheating, I know, but there’s only one person I can associate to side by side and that’s alicia. not only because she’s the resident myungho stan on my dash, but also the mv reminds me of her witty personality!

🌼 not alone ~ belle @xuseokgyu and nele @seohoshi ↳ the first person I thought of while watching not alone is belle. she’s the most supportive mutual, she always showers me with compliments, even when I post the simplest gifset, and she always makes sure to reblog my content even if it gets 2 notes. she surely makes me feel less alone sometimes. ↳ and I associate this song to nele too for a similar reason, but it’s a more general feeling I get from her. we don’t interact much, but when I see her tags on other people’s posts as well, she’s always so supporting and she always catches the smallest details. she really makes you feel like the time you spent on your content is not wasted.

#I tried to include all of my mutuals #but there are people I don't know that well and I don't see often on my dash #so please don't get offended if you're not here #I just wasn't sure which song I should've associated with you #also this is long #I'm so sorry ahah #anyway thank you for sending me this game #it was quite fun! #ask

[buttercupbuck]

2021 fic year in review 🌟

tagged by @woodchoc-magnum @cinematicnomad @extasiswings and @elisela 🧡ilysm guys! 

Total Number Of Completed Works: 9

Total Word Count: 91,185

Fandoms I’ve Written In: 9-1-1

Looking Back, Did You Write More Fic Than You Thought You Would This Year, Less, Or About What You’d Expected? 

less, for sure. i had started out as solely a writer in fandom back in 2020 and only picked up gif-making in march of this year, but i think before where i would’ve sat down and forced myself to work on wips, gif-making became another creative outlet that i could also say something through. which - is nice, and i love gif-making a lot, but i also miss committing myself to writing and expressing things in it that i can’t really through gifsets

What’s Your Own Favorite Story Of The Year? 

oh hm. i feel like i always answer in a week because it’s my baby, but for the sake of switching it up, it’s probably either the and it’ll follow you still series, or scope of the universe. for the latter in particular, i was always interested in the idea of buck thinking of himself as cursed, and how learning about daniel and his parents’ reason for bringing him into the world would shape that even more, so i really enjoyed the concept of this one a lot. and then agoraphobic!eddie is literally my beloved, so yeah. 

Did You Take Any Writing Risks This Year? 

writing smut, for sure. it wasn’t even a lot, just a few scenes that i wrote for in a week, but it was definitely still out of my comfort zone. i was worried that it would feel incredibly lacking and mechanical just because i don’t really feel those things, so a lot of it was kind of a shot in the dark. but as it turns out, reading smut for years helped more than i thought it would, and the scenes didn’t turn out terribly, which is all i needed. 

Do You Have Any Fanfic Or Profic Goals For The New Year? 

i really do want to write more and actually finish the palm springs au (which was probably my goal going into 2021 as well but shhh). i’m hoping hiatus will kinda get me back into it, but yeah! i also love doing small one-shots even though i still take ages on them, but maybe i’ll do some prompts or something just to get back into it. i’m not very good at motivating myself via internal pressure so maybe even just a smidge of external pressure would get me back on track lmaoo 

Most Popular Story Of The Year? 

in a week, but of the rest of my fics which are all one-shots, it was and it’ll follow you still, my agoraphobic!eddie fic. which i’m actually a little surprised by just considering how short it is, but i’m very happy about that 

Story Of Mine Most Under-Appreciated By The Universe, In My Opinion 

oh huh. i think for the most part all my fics do around the same, but i’ll say if i fell, a post 4.14 nightmare + introspection fic that i’m pretty proud of :)

Most Fun Story To Write

only the ocean and you. it was a lot of fun writing buck and eddie on their first date and doing the thing of going to a fancy restaurant and trying to make everything perfect just to end the night somewhere that’s more them (the beach, in this case). i love the ocean very much and idk there’s a feeling that’s very specific to the beach at night, so i had a good time trying to capture it and put buck and eddie in it as well 

Most Unintentionally Telling Story

probably and it’ll follow you still. *victoria justice voice* i think we’re all a little agoraphobic

Biggest Disappointment

honestly, none of them? i feel like relative to last year, i’ve become a lot less fixated on how my fics perform and all that, which is definitely a relief, to say the least. i still go through phases with how i feel about my writing, and while there are probably some things i would’ve changed here and there, i’m ultimately still pretty happy with the way they all turned out. 

Biggest Surprise

that i actually finished in a week, for sure. considering that i’ve spent the last few months on a singular one-shot that’s still only at about 1k now, it’s crazy that i managed to finish a nearly 80k fic at some point this year. 

My Favorite Part Of Fandom This Year

oh it’s been so fun i don’t even know where to start. the clowning over that one still from 4.08 where we were absolutely convinced buck and eddie were arguing, buddie roommates era, the weeks all around 4.13 and 4.14, eddie getting stuck in an elevator clowning, ethical conflict clowning, etc etc. like idk it’s truly so fun coming up with batshit theories and becoming 1000% convinced they’ll happen that i don’t even care when they never do. now i kinda wanna make a little ode to all of of our wrong theories, but for another time. but beyond that, i just love being very unhinged about fictional firefighters with my friends and everyone on here. like idk this year would’ve been so sad and boring without having made the friends i did and putting in the clownergy that i did, so yeah <33 good times were had all around

tagging: @evanbucxley @zeethebooknerd @littlespooneven @capseycartwright @deareddie and @paranoidbean (also sorry if you guys have already done this, i’ve been kinda off and on the last few days and may have missed it!) 

#tag games

[nomattertheoceans]

GIF REQUEST MEME: Favorite season from The 100 - Season four

I love season four for a lot of reasons!! I think it’s the best season of the show and it should have been their last (despite my love for most of s5 ^^) I’m gonna ramble a lot but I don’t want it to take over the gifset so I’ll put it under a cut

Season four is the time of hard, impossible choices for everybody. The bomb at Farm Station, the List, the Nightblood tests, opening the bunker, the anti-radiation medicine…. Everybody is put through the ringer during this season and honestly, this is what I’m here for.

First great point for me personally: They can’t stop the radiations. When season 3 ended with the reveal of the radiations coming, I was legit disappointed with the show, I didn’t want them to spend the season “turning off” radiations miraculously, you know. So when ep 2 of the season aired and the first thing Raven said was “there’s no magic button to stop this” I WAS SO HAPPY!! It immediately got me much more hyped for the rest of the season because I was invested in “riding out 5 years of hell” much more than “let’s find a magic button”. So the season hooked me then ^^

The season is really good at re-using previous themes and twist them in just the right way

Clarke, who was so angry at the council for killing her dad, finds herself in the council’s position, and starts to understand that making such hard decisions is never easy. Making the list for instance, is so different from what she had to do before. The genocide of Mt Weather was an act of despair in the middle of a war, but making the list is a process, she has to truly chose who is “worth” more, which is what the council did when they sent the 100 to the Ground. She choses to hide the truth from everybody despite it going against what she wanted at the start of the show. It’s a really cool change for her character.

The Arkers and Grounders take the decision to test the Nightblood against Luna, the Rock Line thief, and Emori’s will. An obvious reminder of s2 but that I appreciate. I liked the Mt Weather story because of this: the mountain men were the antagonists but they also were the same as the rest of the show, they were doing whatever they had to do to survive, whatever it took, no matter how cruel it could be. We see in this season that when faced with the same decision, our protagonists reach the same result: sacrificing other people’s bodily autonomy to survive is worth it to them. It’s a really interesting theme to bring back because it muddies the waters of who’s right and wrong, and it highlights that in the end, there is no black and white answer.

This season gives us my personal favorite version of Clarke: she’s the closest she’ll get to a true antagonist (only comparable to s5 but s5 is a little bit of a mess so I still prefer her in s4). She has one conviction: saving her people. And to get it, she is ready to lie, to cheat, to kill, whatever it takes. It is interesting because I always saw Clarke in that light. She always believes that she has the right idea and she will do what it takes to get what she thinks is best. That’s where she is interesting to me (I’m not interested in her being an innocent victim forced to take decisions, that’s not how I see her at all and I find her a little dull in that interpretation haha but that’s for another post). Clarke stealing the bunker is a cruel act, but man, it’s incredibly smart. At that moment she knows she’s condeming many people (some of whom very close to her) to death, but she believes deep inside her that it’s the right thing to do so she’s willing to do it. And i really prefer her in those ruthless moments.

Octavia’s arc this season isn’t my favorite, but she is at her best during the last few episodes for me. The creation of Wonkru is one of my favorite scenes of the entire show, even though I saw it coming a mile away lmao (1200 spaces, 12 clans, it was easy to see where they were going!). I love the scene, I love the place it comes from (Octavia channeling Lincoln’s convictions was brilliant). I might not agree with her decisions (skaikru definitely deserved more spots than the other clans), but it makes perfect sense for her character to make this decision. The scene of her talking to Skaikru and telling them they’re no different from the others, and they have to choose or they all die, is also one of my favorites. Octavia received no mercy on the Ark, she had a terribly tragic childhood because of those people who are now begging her for their lives, and she doesn’t budge. The Ark, and the Ground, forced her to be that way, and she doesn’t back away. It’s also all a brilliant introduction to what Wonkru and Octavia will become in s5 (but again, that’s for another post lmao)

I love that we get the introduction of Spacekru because I love their little found family and the scene where they reach the Ring is so good!

Murphy’s speech to Clarke makes me tear up everytime I see it (it really was one of the strongest moments of acting of the entire show, Richard Harmon is amazing in it). Emori also blows me away in the previous episode, the way she’s shown to be ruthless, and cunning, and also how well she reads people. She knew they would come to test someone, and she did everything she had to for that someone to not be her. I love her ^^

I like the plot of the second dawn bunker well enough! (although I will never change my mind that Cadogan was a dumbass for putting it where it is instead of IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FOREST WHERE THERE’S NO RISK OF BUILDINGS FALLING ON IT LIKE WHAT LITERALLY HAPPENED IN S5 OKAY anyway…..), it’s far from perfect but I like that it explains the people coming to greet Becca in s3, and I like that we expand a little on the origins of the Grounders culture (even though I wanted more about this). It’s kind of an “easy” solution, but at the same time it’s not. It was established early in the season before being abandoned, and even once it’s found, it’s not at all a perfect and easy solution. They have to fight for it, decide who lives there, it’s a pretty interesting development. What I mean is that it’s not discovered one episode before the end and it doesn’t solve everything. If anything, it creates more conflict. Which I appreciate alot.

ALSO ALSO Echo is a badass general in this season and I love it. She goes from being a spy in earlier seasons, to full-on commanding armies and being a strategic mastermind and I love it! She’s also ruthless and cunning and I lvoe that for her. It’s also such a good season for her and Bellamy!!! I lvoe all of it ^^

This season also has one of my favorite underrated quotes!!!! I’m gonna use a gif here cause I’m not at the limit yet lmao

“It’s unity day.” GODDDD it’s so good. It’s simple, but it conveys so much information and I love it:

Unity Day: the stations coming together to survive -> we’re virtually in the same situation here.

It’s a happy occasion, a day of survival and hope, just like the hope Octavia gave all the clans with her decisions

But it’s also a day of death and loss. She’s giving Kane a choice: join Wonkru with 100 members, or die in the flames.

It reminds us of the history of the Arkers, and I love when world-building does this thing where both characters are shown to have such a close cultural background that three little words are enough to convey such a strong message. It’s a detail but I love it and I wanted to ramble for a little bit ^^

Clarke’s sacrifice: This is when it gets to “meh” points for the seasons for me. Clarke deciding to stay behind to save Spacekru was a good moment. Yes, I know that if she hadn’t climbed the tower they all would have died anyway, but still. It’s a great moment for her character. She has hurt those people time and time again during this season, she was ready to let them die more than once, and I think she regrets it (although again, I like to see the extremes she’s willing to reach in this season). In that moment, she doesn’t decide that it’s too late to survive so she might as well give up. She knows she’s going to die, and she gives her last moments to save the lives of the people she hurt in the past. And I really love this. That is….. Until Clarke is revealed to not have died. I truly believe that she had reached the ending of her arc in the show, and it would have been a great ending to her character. But that’s also because I believe the show should have ended in s4 lmao. If it had ended, then maybe they could have left her death ambiguois, by showing her reaching the safety of the lab, but not showing her again afterwards. That way, we had no way of being sure she survived, but it was left ambiguous enough to make us decide her fate outselves.

The perfect ending: I didn’t choose the last gif randomly. That scene of Raven and Bellamy looking down on the Earth was in my opinion the perfect shot to end the show. At that point in time, we are left in a place that is very similar to where the show started: the Earth is destroyed by radiations, some people are waiting it out in space, some people are waiting it out on the ground. it mirrors the premise of the show (although in a much smaller scale), but this time, we’re left with hope of what might come in the future. Those two groups know (or hope) that they will reunite, especially with Octavia and Bellamy, the relationship at the core of the show, being separated. If the show ends here, we have come full circle from the pilot episode, and we can imagine how those two groups will reunite in the future. I find that ending the best possible for the show, so even though there’s so much I like about season 5, I wish the show had stopped at that moment, at that shot of Raven and Bellamy looking down on the Earth.

That got reaaaaally long, so…. sorry about that xD If you’ve reached this far, feel free to tell me what you think of this season (or the others haha) or send me asks, or request for other gifsets!!!

#the 100 #the100edit #my gifs #I will have you know that I did NOT edit this text lmao

[ablindingsupernova]

QotS 5.09

I almost forgot to do a write-up for this episode, I was so busy looking at and reblogging gifsets of THAT scene. 

But I think my feelings on this episode can be mostly boiled down to:

LOVED all of the Jeresa. HATED all of the Kote. And it pains me to write that because I genuinely liked Pote and Kelly Anne as characters. I was mostly ambivalent about their romance but that quickly turned to irritation and dislike when SO MUCH screen time was devoted to their expectant parents storyline. 

I Just. Don’t. Care. And I’ll never understand why the writers thought this was a good idea. What fans are that invested in either of their characters that they would want to watch this?

And I was left scratching my head a bit over Devon wanting to move forward with assassinating Kostya after he found out he was a diplomat. How much of a threat was he that Devon would risk an international incident. A Russian diplomat being killed on US soil. Especially with no proof to offer that he was a crime lord. And unless I misunderstood, it didn’t seem that Devon knew in advance that Teresa was going to use the same poison to take him out, so no plan to blame it on the Russians themselves going in. I did enjoy the poetic justice of Teresa using that method to kill him, and the look on Kostya’s face when she said, “but you’re already dead”. It would’ve been nice to have spent more time with Kostya as a character to really savor that moment, but I can be happy with how it played out.

THAT scene. I never, in a million years, believed we would get that kind of jeresa this season. I was shocked when they kissed at the bar, so you can imagine my surprise at the love scene. And I thought the scene itself was so well done. All the smiles and tenderness blended in with the passion that’s been brimming between them since James left. Peter and Alice really do sell the depth of their connection to and love for one another. 

And then coming full circle, with James “killing” Teresa as it happened in the pilot. What so many of us have been speculating came to pass and since we all know she isn’t really dead, it was so satisfying. I’ve always wondered why James (and the sniper, before it was confirmed to be James) shot the box of cocaine on Teresa’s dresser. She wasn’t standing anywhere near it when she was hit. I suppose it could’ve been intended as a metaphor but it seems pointless in real time. After seeing the morgue scene in the promo, I’m now wondering if it wasn’t cocaine at all, but some drug to slow her breathing and heart rate so much as to mimic death. I may be overthinking that and I won’t be surprised if in this case, a cigar really is a cigar, but I like the idea that James had to blast the “cocaine” in order to make sure no one else would try to use it later and kill themselves. 

I’m not thrilled by the prospect of getting very little Teresa in the series finale. I’m hoping that we’ll get flashbacks of conversations between them that will show how they were planning to get out this way all along. Otherwise, I’ll be disappointed if we only see her for a moment at the very end of the show, especially when it feels like she didn’t get as much screen time as she should have through the season. 

Three days until the end. I’m not sure I’m ready to say goodbye. :-(

#queen of the south #qots