Boy: Send Nudes? ;)

take me with you. : road trip plot where muse a and muse b are like college roommates/best friends x1000 like they practically spend every moment with each other and everything and stay up all night watching reruns of their favorite shows, sharing almost every meal bc they’re cheap like that and don’t mind, having shitty jobs with huge dreams and all that. muse a has a long distance high school sweetheart bf/gf who moved across country for school/job and when their relationship starts to strain, muse a reallllly feels strongly about driving across country to see them to try and fix things (they also might suspect the person is cheating on them). flying ain’t an option bc they’re intensely scared of being in the air & also they have no car. that’s where their partner in crime, muse b comes in. muse b has the car, soundtrack, and the navigational skills, muse a has the money, the lively company, and the snacks. they ditch classes for about a week or something and plan it out vaguely but end up just bullshitting the rest of the trip there. 

attention: this is the MEAT of the plot!!!!! they go clubbing, visit lame museums, become extras in a movie, get kicked out of zoos/parks or some shit, stay in crappy motels, get stalked by someone who muse b is convinced a total psycho, attend festivals and act like total kids, are forced to take lots and lots and LOTS of detours, end up fixing the car once or twice, go camping in an abandoned barn/middle of nowhere/other shady place, crash random weddings, get arrested, almost start the apocalypse, and so much more. 

of course tons of weird, sexual tension and maybe even some things happen on the trip that they don’t wanna speak about which kind of adds some tension there (hell tbh they might not even reach their destination and decide to turn around) BUT if they make it to where they need to go in a matter of what was supposed to be a week trip ( now probably 2 or 3), muse a goes looking for their long distance bae when they get there and then gets their heart broken while muse b is there to help pick up the pieces. and then muse b picks this time when they’re gong back home to confess how they’ve always loved muse a but the past week(s) they’ve started to really, really fall in love with them and they don’t wanna ruin what they have and blah blah. muse a is confused, vulnerable but can’t deny that they’ve always felt this stronger connection with muse b compared to everyone else in their lives. then the two of them start to figure out their lives from there and learn how to love and give and GROW and accept and celebrate and so many fluffy and angsty things. FUCK. 

bonus points if: 

it’s a f/f or m/m plot and they have to do a lot of coming out to each other and then to family and friends back home

muse a does not feel the same way when muse b confesses their love at first and they have a really big, emotional, enlightening blow-upppp

when/if they get back home, muse b’s ex comes back in their life and becomes an obstacle between them and muse a

like or reblog if you use this!

disco elysium telling us that there's hope and salvation in a shitty war-torn world is actually so beautiful. disco elysium telling us that screwing up your (previous) life is okay, you just gotta pick up the pieces and move forward. disco elysium telling us there's hope, that the night is always darkest before the dawn. it's refreshing to have a post apocalyptic world turn out to be not depressing because fuck it, we're gonna make it better, right?

would love to be @ home, thinking about asteroids & stars & old friends & pre-apocalyptic fears & flashback events & astrological moments & philosophical questions & & &

top tips for intermediate giffers

so, disclaimer - I have learned most of these things through trial and error, so if you see older sets by me that do something I say isn’t great in gifs - *coughcolouringcough* - that is why. and ofc I’ve only been in the giffing game for about a year, and because the programme I use is adobe photoshop cs6, these tips will be based largely on what I know using that.

first off - dimensions. current dimensions are 540px in width for wide gifs (and they vary in height) and 268px for the smaller gifs that take up roughly half that space. stick to those or at least stay consistent in your dimensions.

try to crop out logos and credits. it’s a pain esp because a lot of my more recent cw show downloads have all had the pesky cw watermark in the corner. but trust me, your gif will look better without it. 

if you’re giffing poc, try and avoid or at least exercise some caution with blue photo filters and blue colour balance. they are notorious for whitewashing poc, especially those who can seem white-passing in certain lighting or if they’re coloured wrong. on that note, go easy on exposure, brightness and the lighter options for curves and levels layers.

if your gif looks grainy in the black areas, you can increase the contrast in a brightness/contrast layer, or in a levels layer, or in a curves layer (I find the more subtle one is linear contrast because the other options tend to be a bit overboard). if your gif still looks grainy, try increasing blacks in a selective colouring layer.

this one is definitely one I’m guilty of - if you’re unsure about colouring, don’t post your set immediately. save it as a draft on your laptop or tablet, and then open tumblr on your phone and see how it looks there. if it looks too saturated or conversely washed out, or the gifs are too dark and you can’t actually see the faces, then you can go back and tinker contrast and colouring until it looks better.

frame-wise, I tend to either have 50 or 38 frames for a gif. if it’s 50, each frame will be 0.06 seconds. if it’s 38, each frame is 0.07 seconds. in both cases the total length of the gif is three seconds. no matter how many frames I have, my minimum length for any gif is always three seconds. it can go above that and that’s fine, but I tend not to go below that. that’s just my preference, but I’ve seen shorter gifs on here before and I think it kinda is a bit - blink and you’ll miss it, kind of thing, so I’d recommend all your gifs to be at the very least 2.5 seconds long each. I’d recommend you don’t go over 75 frames in total, just because your gif will get too long or it’ll go way too fast.

when importing video frames to layers (aka your first step in making a gif), try to avoid using limit to every _ frames unless you’ve got a long scene that you want to get all the dialogue in. the reason is because when you play the gif, it will be twice as fast in speed and that makes it kinda jarring to see.

psds are great, especially if they’re tailored for a specific show which has dodgy lighting (such as arrow). use them, but always give credit where requested and also reblog them.

keep text centred by first selecting the text layer, then manually selecting all the frames (as in click the first frame and then go to the last frame and click while holding on to shift), then doing ctrl + a (or the mac equivalent of select all) and then going to layer > align > horizontal centres and then again - layer > align > vertical centres

on the subject of text, the most readable colour is going to probably be a light one. my default is white, with 1px stroke and 5px distance and size drop shadow (opacity 75%), both in black. to do this, you again need to select the text layer, manually select all the frames and then right-click the text layer and select blending options. stroke will be 3px on default but I find that’s too thick most of the time. you shouldn’t have to change any of the drop shadow settings on default.

keep your fonts simple! my faves are intro, arial (bold italic), century gothic (bold italic) and gill sans mt (bold italic). most of the time using all caps is your best bet, unless your font is distinctive enough. if you go for something more complex, curly or anything that isn’t totally plain, just be careful with sizing. 

on that note, bear in mind the size of the gif when you size your text. if you’ve got a wide gif, it ofc depends on the font but my font size varies between 18 (for the plainer fonts) to 24 (for the more handwriting-y fonts). for the smaller gifs, I’d recommend sizing centred text no bigger than maybe 15, and if you’re using text for captions, 12 is probably best (and arial bold and italic is my default here).

using selective colour is a lot of fun! but just be aware that sometimes you (I) can go overboard and it messes up the gif. (aka I have definitely messed up with selective colour before and my gifs have been shoddy so like - learn from my mistakes, yo.) pay special attention to neutrals because that changes the colours of people’s faces a lot of the time. also it is perfectly normal to have a few selective colour layers. just watch out for graininess.

it’s always nice for your gifs to have similar colours. if you want things to match or at least be in the same ballpark palette wise, it’s always a good idea to zoom out (66.7% or 50% is best depending on size and number) and then drag each of your gif windows side by side and/or stacked on top of each other, like this:

that way you can see if the colours go together for the gifset as a whole.

it’s always good to have a vibrance layer - the vibrance is something you can increase to make the colours more, well, vibrant, and decreasing saturation can help balance out the effects of selective colour esp if someone white looks a bit too pink or orange. just be aware that when giffing poc you should use this layer with caution and do your best not to whitewash.

make sure your clips are at least 720p. if you’ve downloaded the episode and the resolution isn’t high enough, if it’s a popular enough scene you might get lucky and find it on youtube. if you do, you can easily download it, very possibly in a higher resolution, using onlinevideoconverter.com or another site. you may have to crop out watermarks, but it’s worth it if you get clearer gifs.

that’s pretty much all I got for the time being. none of these rules are set in stone. in fact, none of these rules are even really rules, because there is often no order to art. but these tips may help you along the way. be sure to reblog if you found this useful, and happy giffing!

me: *forgets friends birthdays*

me: *confuses memories*

me: *forgets own middle name*

me, also: hey did you know that all pennies minted prior to 1982 are pure copper pennies and not copper plated and are technically actually worth 2 cents

Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters

Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.

As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.

Deaf Characters:

Deaf characters masterpost

Deaf dialogue thread

Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)

A deaf author’s advice on deaf characters

Dialogue between deaf characters

Mute Characters

Life as a Mute

My Silent Summer:  Life as a Mute

What It’s Like Being Mute

21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute

I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!

Blind Characters:

The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.

@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.

The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.

An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.

And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.

Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye

4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye

Learning to Live With One Eye

Adapting to the Loss of an Eye

Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision

Monocular Depth Perception

Deaf-Blind Characters

What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?

Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights

Deaf and Blind by 30

Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)

Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)

A Day of a Deaf Blind Person

Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind

How the Deaf-Blind Communicate

Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind

Raising a DeafBlind Baby

If you have any more resources to add, let me know!  I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.

I hope this helps, and happy writing!  <3

i was gonna wait until tomorrow, but here it goes: castiel deserved better. he deserved a spot in that finale. a physical spot. a chance to see him at peace. even if he wasn’t with dean. just a moment to see him happy in the “Heaven he deserved.” two mentions in the finale episode for one of the MAIN characters is not satisfactory. it’s lazy storytelling. and cowardly.

it literally doesn’t make any sense. family became MORE than these two brothers over the seasons. it became MORE than their relationship. i’m sorry. it just did. and ALL of that beautiful work j2 did in the barn scene was ruined by that ending. sorry.

ALSO. WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT OF CAS’ BIG SPEECH ABOUT LOVE AND HAPPINESS IN 15x18 IF WE DON’T GET DEAN’S RESPONSE??? SO WE HINT AND JOKE AT THEIR RELATIONSHIP SINCE S4, BUT NEVER FOLLOW THROUGH??? WHAT WAS THE REASON? HOMOPHOBIA??? GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK, CW. FOR FFS.

somebody in that room should’ve said IT’S BEEN OVER A DECADE. MAKE THE HUNTER AND THE ANGEL CANON, YOU COWARDS.

it’s infuriating. every scene. every word. every theme. and for what? THAT ‘bros4life/super-het/we mention the angel twice’ ending?

how disappointing.

looked up celebrities with my sun moon and rising and didn’t recognize anyone so i guess i’m the most famous of us all

I was getting pretty fed up with links and generators with very general and overused weapons and superpowers and what have you for characters so:

Here is a page for premodern weapons, broken down into a ton of subcategories, with the weapon’s region of origin. 

Here is a page of medieval weapons.

Here is a page of just about every conceived superpower.

Here is a page for legendary creatures and their regions of origin.

Here are some gemstones.

Here is a bunch of Greek legends, including monsters, gods, nymphs, heroes, and so on. 

Here is a website with a ton of (legally attained, don’t worry) information about the black market.

Here is a website with information about forensic science and cases of death. Discretion advised. 

Here is every religion in the world. 

Here is every language in the world.

Here are methods of torture. Discretion advised.

Here are descriptions of the various methods used for the death penalty. Discretion advised.

Here are poisonous plants.

Here are plants in general.

Feel free to add more to this!