#and i know i can export but the file is FUCKING HUGE so fuck me

[biggs-regretti]

tumblr would be perfect..

I REALLY really wish I could just switch my primary and secondary blogs around I WANNA COMMENT ON PPLS COMMENTS 

[undeadorion]

I am once again starting a spite project. And it's all Inkblot's fault.

This site is a developmental nightmare. There's horrible misalignments everywhere, zero accessibility options, a horrible color scheme, and it's very clear they're not even looking at the code they export.

In literally any framework that isn't just basic HTML, you have the ability to make very modular layouts. Even in basic PHP, if there's a feature of your site (like a header) that's going to appear on every page, you code it in one file, then import that file everywhere you're going to be using it. Across every structure, you're going to have your base file (often called "layout") that includes all of your header and nav information. Sometimes your footer will be separate (like in PHP), or if you're using a beefier templating engine (like Twig or Jinja2) you're just gonna have a bit of code that says "page content goes here."

You then go on and create various views. Stuff like the skeleton for profiles, feeds, notifications, individual posts, every other page type you'll need. Each of them referencing those basic elements from the layout.

Only Inkblot hasn't done that. For some bizarre reason. All 3 screenshots above are different pages across Inkblot. The explore page, showing their "default" header. The "home" page that looks like they forgot what they were doing and made a sidebar instead of including the header. Then the "categories" page where the header is horribly squashed.

Also, for some bizarre reason, they've disabled any ability to use keyboard navigation on the site. This is offered by default by the browser, you don't have to do anything. Arrow keys, page up/down and the spacebar all scroll for you. Having that disabled is a serious accessibility issue.

All I know about the "team" behind this mess is just 1 developer and a handful of people helping to moderate it all. And I am determined to prove (to no one, really), that a single developer is not an excuse for this absolute tragedy of a website. It's a shambling mess of poorly strung together templates and plugins, with way too many things linking to other websites.

YOUR ABOUT PAGE SHOULD NOT BE ON A DIFFERENT DOMAIN AND LOOK LIKE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WEBSITE! FUCK!

My goal is to include as many features as I can that are found on Inkblot (minus monetization). I will also be drawing inspiration from older art gallery sites like Fur Affinity and 2010's DeviantArt. It will be 90% built from scratch using Django (instead of Flutter), only implementing plugins and code that isn't my own when 1) it can be properly sourced and 2) can be seamlessly integrated.

If I can find people to help me test alpha versions and moderate content, I will hopefully one day launch it as a real website. Otherwise, it will at the very least be a functional demo as part of my portfolio.

EDIT: If this were just someone's personal website, I wouldn't care. Inkblot's design infuriates me on so many levels because for starters, they're charging money for a "premium" version. Not just a patreon or a tipping system, but an integrated "premium" system. And second, they're handling your personal data. Part of why I'm not even sure I'll launch mine is web security is a HUGE deal. You can't just fumble your way through it and assume you'll be okay. Look at what Pillowfort did. If someone is making absolute novice mistakes like squashing images horribly out of proportion, they cannot be trusted to handle your passwords or other information. Period.

[purpleandsilver]

Using StimuWrite: First Impressions

Wherein I typed up this post on the app, exported the .txt file to my OneDrive, and formatted it on Tumblr whilst laying in bed.

First I downloaded it from the official source. Then I explored the other themes. I settled on buying and downloadig one of te extra theme packs in order to have the Clear Crystal theme. I'm running into the problem that the background I want to use- Galaxy Spiral- is making it hard to read text as I type closer to the center of the spiral. I changed to the Outline theme and it seems to help but I wish there was a background that was slightly grey and transulucent. The emojis are cool but mushrooms don't go with the theme. Oh well. I think mushrooms are cute. Hm. Text is getting hard to read because the galaxy spiral is darker towards the bottom. Let me see..... Okay so I switched backgrounds. Dark works okay with Clear Crystal. I just noticed that the emojis isn't just mushrooms like I wanted. I don't like the thumbs up emote randomly showing up. Wait where'd the mushies go. 😟I like the mushies. 😟 Okay so I turned off Emoji Feedback thinking it would get rid of the thumbs up. I don't think it did but I did turn on the lots option. I don't like the hand clapping emoji either. I just want the mushies. Anways, the writing part works fine. Let's explore the fonts.

Right now I'm using Courier Prime. Let's see what else we have. Roboto Sans is basic AF but someone likes it lol. Noto Serif is very in your face serif. I understand why Open Dyslexic was added- for acessability- but omg my ADHD brain hates this font. But I'm glad it's avaible for people who need it. Short Stack is interesting in that I don't know how to describe it. It's... short and handwritingish? Ish. Marckscript are for people who cosplay William Shakespeare characters. It's cursvie so there's a huge generation that doesn't know how to write it. Illegible is definitely for people who want nothing but chaos. I don't and I hate this font with a passion lol. Okay I'm back to my favorite font of all time. Courier Prime really is the number one font ever. It is just so good and I personally believe it pairs well with the keyboard or typewriter sounds.

Speaking of sounds let's try those out. Right now I'm on Typewriter. Now I'm on Bubble. Absoulutely the fuck not. No. Omg I hate this sound. My brain is screaming. And now I'm on Bloop which sounds like a fire alarm and is giving me flashbacks from school days. NO. And here we have keyboard which is like Typewriter but lighter because it's modern. Oh there's one called Ah. OMFG I HATE IT. Just turned on Scribble and I'd rather listen to nails on a chalkboard. Plastic Rustle reminds me of my cat Maximus and how he likes to eat plastic. I see the appeal but no for me. Now I'm on Bubble Wrap. I'm having mixed feelings right now. I don't hate it but I like it. And finally, Drum. No. Just no. And I'm back to Typewriter because it's the best. Most of the sounds are a no for me, but I'm not the only one using them. They're cool but imma stick with Typewriter or Keyboard. Okay now I'm going to close and reopen the program to see if it saves me work. Gonna copy it beforehand though.

Okay it does save your work in a way. I had to change my theme again on start and recovery my session. Interesting. Anyways ratings are arbitary but I think this app is a 10/10 for what it does because I'm almost at 650 words. I wonder if I can get there just by typing mindlessly. I bet I could. This feels very stimulating. I need four more words. Oh hey I'm over 650 words. Nice.

[wastelandhell]

Sorry if this question is too broad or imposing but I'm trying to get into modding Fallout 4 for the first time, mostly to make armor skins. What're the best tutorials? I've tried searching online but a lot of the tutorials are outdated. (Would also love to know how to bash existing skins together though modelling my own would be fun too). Again sorry for this ask I'm just so lost about how to get into modding lol.

Ahhh do not apologize for asking me about modding fallout. I could talk about the guts of this stupid game all day ahhh

modding grip^

Unfortunately I...don't know any good tutorials. I think a lot of Fo4 modders came over already knowing skyrim or FNV. Most of what I know is based on outdated guides, old loverslab threads, my existing graphic design knowledge, and trial-and-error. I think armour is the best place to start because there are so many tools available (thanks tittymodders!), and you don't have to worry about needing 3DS Max for collisions or animations.

This is the only modding tutorial I've ever watched. It's old, but good to show you a proper workflow and how to set up your files. They use creation kit, but if you're just making armour its way easier to use xEdit. I don't even have the ck installed, I do everything in xEdit.

This is an excellent guide to outfit conversions. It gets pretty in depth, but you really don't need to bother with the dismemberment section if it's just for you. It's for FG reduced but you can use it as a general guide for weighting anything for any body and getting your modded outfit game ready.

Texture edits and outfit conversions are where I started and are probably the easiest. The best thing to do is just poke around mods you like and see how they do it.

Some tools:

xEdit: Plugin editor for creation engine games. If you're doing any kind of modding you should learn how to use this. Esl-flagging, running complex sorter, making bashed patches and making your own compatibility patches are skills you need if you want to run a heavily modded game.

Icestorms texture toolbox: the best texture tool, i use the "batch processing" tab at the end to convert .png (no alpha) and .tga (alpha) files to .dds.

Nvidia texture tools exporter: lets you open .dds file in photoshop with the alpha channel intact. You don't need a nvidia card, I'm all team red. Don't bother using this to export unless you have to, its slow as fuck.

Sagethumbs: Gives .dds files thumbnails in windows explorer.

IrfanView: For quickly viewing texture files without launching photoshop. Also an excellent general image viewer.

Bethesda Archive Extractor: Crack open those .ba2 files and get to the goods.

Material Editor: What it says on the tin, lets you edit Fo4 and Fo76 material files. These are like containers that have the paths to all your textures and how they are to be shaded to attach to .nif files.

NifSkope: View and edit .nif files. Dev 7 is the recommended, but Dev 8 can open Fo76 meshes if you want to backport those.

Outfit Studio: Even if you don't use body replacers, this is an incredible tool for editing and weighting meshes. If you're making armour you need this. This is also where I make most of my mashups: you can pull parts from different outfits, slap them together, and export them quickly and easily.

Blender: It's free and it works. Learning to navigate this is going to be your biggest hurdle but it's worth it, trust me. Thankfully blender has a huge community and hundreds of tutorials. This is where I make my hi poly models and do all my retopo/uvs. I also prefer to use blender to edit meshes because it has more robust editing tools.

PyNifly: What I use to import/export .nif files from blender.

Fo4 is made in the 2013 version of 3DS Max and the havok content tools but i haven't bothered to pirate that yet. You don't need it for armour anyways.

I'm sorry this is so long and rambly. If you have a more specific question I might be more helpful ha.

[cosmogyros]

I'm not silent because I don't want to be posting. I'm silent because I'm a little scared to post. Like the way you don't want to let yourself get too excited about something in case it's taken away from you.

I got really spooked by the whole thing that happened to my blog this week. This blog means so much to me – it's an archive of so much of my life by now – that it really fucked me up to be reminded that this website can take it away from me whenever they want, just on a whim. It's scary to think that something I've poured so many years of intense feelings into, my online safe space, a place where I feel a little bit held by the internet, could just vanish like that.

I've been intensely researching backup possibilities with every free minute of my time these past few days. Of course I exported the blog and downloaded the export right away. But that wouldn't save e.g. all my tags-only posts. And I want to save those. (I don't care about saving huge files like videos, but I want my tag rambles!)

I know you can mirror a blog to Wordpress hosting, but only up to a certain size, and mine is far above that size. My current idea is to maybe dust off my own domain and install Wordpress on it and mirror my blog there – apparently if you use your own website there's a higher size limit?

I don't know. I'm so ignorant about all this stuff. I have a domain name but I didn't even know until the other day that you have to pay for hosting separately. And I'm completely overwhelmed by all the hosting providers out there. They offer lists of perks that I don't need, and then say "Only $29.99 a month!" or something like that.

I can't pay 30 bucks a month just to back up my Tumblr! The backup isn't even for anyone to look at except me – I specifically DON'T want it accessible to the whole web. I'd want to make it password-protected or something (if I ever figure out how to do that either).

It's so overwhelming and exhausting and I'm miserable right now. If anyone has any advice about a reliable, affordable Tumblr mirror option that not only backs up the entire blog so far but also mirrors each new post made, I would gratefully accept your tips and wisdom.

[sibyl-of-space]

UMMMM HOLY SHIT WHAT??

EXTREMELY HUGELY BIG GHOST TRICK SPOILERS B/C I CANNOT TALK ABOUT WHAT I HAVE JUST DISCOVERED WRT ROMHACKING WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT IT

So.... I think? Sissel and Yomiel? Are given DIFFERENT CODES that point to their sprites???? Let me explain what I mean. There is only 1 “master” Yomiel-sprite for each expression in cpac_3d.bin, and changing this changes every instance of that sprite in the game. This was what I first tried that turned Yomiel into a cat with no way to turn him back.

I have been going through every single scene instead, and the sprite pointers are hard coded by language per line of dialogue, so I have been mass find+replace-ing the codes that correspond to Sissel’s sprites on the left side. Doing it this way has so far replaced all of the dialogue as expected, and - I assumed - it missed Yomiel in one of the scenes because he conveniently is located on the right side of the conversation.

BUT. I JUST TESTED WITH ANOTHER SCENE WITH YOMIEL. AND HE IS ON THE LEFT. AND //IT DID NOT REPLACE HIM.//

These were both screenshots from the SAME scene where I had find+replaced ALL codes that point to Human-Sissel. Yomiel is intact... Sissel is a cat:

I THINK THIS MEANS THAT EVEN IF THEY SHARE THE SAME SPRITES, THE PALETTES, DEFINED GOD KNOWS WHERE, FOR YOMIEL AND SISSEL ARE SEPARATE. DIFFERENT NUMBERS PULL THE SAME SPRITES DEPENDING ON WHO IS TALKING. THIS IS HUGE.

However, for now, I have absolutely no fucking idea where in the FUCK those palettes are defined. I am going to try to finish doing it this way just to get a janky version done, but if I can find those palettes, that will be the holy grail. It means I can a) re-point Sissel in one place rather than 47302483298430284398 places, b) easily do it for other languages, and c) if I can figure out how to export, edit, and import new sprites [enormous “if”; the file types are not recognized by anything I have used so far, will probably take reverse-engineering] I might be able to eventually work toward the ultimate goal of a full palette of Cat Sissel Expressions.

That’s way out of my depth currently. For right now, I am focused on just making a very basic Playable Full Cat Mode. But this has implications for more down the road. I may not be done with this for a while yet.

[13atoms]

Deep Focus: Chapter 2 [Tom Hiddleston x Reader]

Summary: Tom is a successful porn director with a romantic streak which proves very popular with his female audience. His resident porn actress and business partner has been with him through thick and thin, the two of them growing completely inseparable, even as her own career starts taking off.

But working in such close proximity is intense, and burgeoning feelings threaten to complicate their professional relationship.

Mature, smut, porn director!AU, ethical porn production discussion, porn-star-and-coworker!reader. Friends to lovers, slow-ish burn.

This chapter: [6.4k] Ao3 link

For the first time in forever, you were at the studio before Tom.

You couldn’t remember a day he’d been later than you, and you finally started to work alone as the clock ticked past midday. As punishment you sat at his desk, booting up your computer where his usually sat and ignoring the quiet fear that something was wrong.

The studio was too quiet. The kettle was cold. There were no props strewn about the place, no piles of scripts left on every free surface. There wasn’t a random actor there to audition, or tape marking out marks for a future shoot. As you stared out of the office doorway, absorbing the clean, lifeless space, you kind of hated it.

The camera was back where it belonged, the corner you’d shot in yesterday was empty. The lights were all packed away and the space seemed huge again. Like it had yesterday. If you closed your eyes, you could still see the cosy bed in that corner, the place on the floor Tom had sat as he watched you, the heavy black lens that couldn’t distract you from his bright eyes watching you.

Had you done something wrong?

You tapped nervously at your keyboard, opening your inbox just for something to do.

And there was that job offer: staring you in the face. You hadn’t replied yet, still undecided. It was a huge pay check. A one-off gig with a studio you knew Tom didn’t really like. They were… cutthroat. Rough. More traditional in their… treatment of their stars. You knew they were professionals, but the content they produced wasn’t exactly morally what Tom approved of.

The film they wanted you for was brutal. It would be safe, but it would be intense. Probably demeaning. Against the principles Tom stood for. You closed the email again.

The two of you had never thought to discuss exclusivity, and you wondered if it was implied in the working relationship you had. If he just… expected it. You needed to bring it up with him soon. You’d been avoiding the email for long enough.

“What else?” you sighed to yourself, half-expecting one of Tom’s usual snarky replies as you talked to yourself.

The office was silent. Your inbox was boring. You only had one more unopened email. As usual, it was from Tom, though one email was better than the usual half-dozen he sent you every night. It was titled: Approval?

That was the usual process, you approved the videos before they went live. But what was he planning on posting? There wasn’t anything for this week.

Unlisted on his site, you immediately recognised the set from today. The timestamp said forty minutes. For a moment you were gobsmacked, wondering how late Tom had worked to have that footage exported and edited already. Wondering why he’d uploaded it already. And how forty minutes had slipped through your fingers, watched silently.

It was a startlingly quick turnaround. He had to have a reason, he usually did. Yet your hand still shook as you hit play.

You winced at hearing your own voice, seeing yourself so out of control like that. But it all looked good. Scrubbing quickly through the timeline, there was one edit you were looking for. One clumsy edit that would look like a jump-cut, and you feared might ruin the film.

You didn’t see it. Instead, the whole video was uncut, even the moment you were sure he would remove. You looked debauched, ruined, hair messy and your body thoroughly overworked. But you could only look at your face. At the vulnerability, as you looked past the camera, staring at Tom.

Why did he leave that in?

In the moment you hadn’t realised how long you were looking at him, searching for what to do next, desperate for something from him. It was no longer your voice coming from the laptop’s tinny speakers, it was a deeper one. A comforting, soft tone.

“You’re doing amazing,” he said, clear as day. And then, “another one?”

You paused the clip, grimacing at the contorted look of desperation on your own static face, and let your face fall into your hands. Tom was never clumsy. He was a perfectionist. He was never in his own films.

So why had he left that in? You’d have to talk to him about it.

Then you’d have to save this copy of the clip.

Fuck.

The door finally opened, the jingle of Tom’s keys announcing him before he arrived. You didn’t bother to hide your screen.

“Morning,” he greeted, cheery as ever.

“Afternoon,” you returned.

That was his usual joke at your expense. Except he was late for once. He gave you a short laugh, so short you barely recognised it.

“Yeah, I know,” he conceded.

You offered an olive branch; neither of you really cared if the other was late.

“Up all-night editing?”

He hummed approval, barely acknowledging your comments. He’d already glanced over your shoulder as he reached for a folder, not acknowledging that you’d stolen his desk, wordlessly settling in opposite you.

Instead his short nails tapped against the folder, his feet settling against the outer side of the desk, as he seemed to look for the words to say to you.

You’d never noticed how much higher his chair was than your usual one, letting you peer down at him a little. You liked it. And wondered if it was intentional.

“I was surprised you got yesterday’s shoot polished off so quick,” you commented.

He had the nerve to look a little embarrassed.

“It was a good one, I, uh, I thought we could post it today.”

You raised an eyebrow, he kept talking.

“It didn’t even really need editing I mean you were… it was amazing. I think it’ll do really well and –”

He trailed off. You took the chance to interrupt him.

“I think you forgot to edit yourself out. Twenty-eight minute mark.”

You expected him to pull the video up. He just sat there, watching his hands as they tapped across that fucking file.

“You can hear your voice, Tom.”

He finally blinked up at you, and you suddenly realised you hated this. This switched power dynamic. You wanted to give him his big serious job back. Be the annoying, less-serious one who relished in kicking at his desk and winding him up.

This wasn’t fun.

“Is that a problem?” he offered, finally.

Your mouth opened in surprise.

“I mean, it’s your choice. You’ve just never done that before.”

“Hm?”

“I mean, your name’s always there but… you’ve never been in the films before.”

“It’s just my voice,” he brushed it off.

But both of you knew that was a lie.

Because that made him your costar. The person you were… performing to. It made him part of the fantasy itself. You closed the video in front of you. You didn’t need to watch any more. Couldn’t watch any more in front of him.

“Well if that’s all good… then yeah. Send it.”

You couldn’t hide the flatness of your voice, and you caught Tom’s concerned glance. You scooped up your computer before he could say something serious.

“I’ll, uh, give you your desk back,” you smiled, standing to swap seats, “your fancy chiropractic chair is hurting my spine.”

He huffed, but stood to swap places with a good-natured smile. You tried to conceal your jolt of surprise as he brushed past a bit too close. You’d opened your laptop back up again, ready to take on some bullshit task, when Tom reached across to gently close the lid.

“I wanted to talk.”

You set the computer aside, lacing your fingers together instead, your throat closing as you wondered what on earth about. Could he fire you? The seriousness on his face was enough to make you worried.

“What about?”

Your words sounded so flimsy, so much hollower than his rich, clean baritone that you wanted to say them again. Without sounding like a coward.

“Just… yesterday.”

You glanced up once to meet his eyes, but you couldn’t take it. Your focused on the shallow marks your nails left against the back of your hand.

“You seemed unhappy,” he continued, “and although the shoot was great, I just wanted to check in. I ask a lot of you, and I just wondered if it was too much.”

You blinked in surprise, and felt that hot shame rising in your chest. You had a horrible feeling you knew why you’d been so strange. And you couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I’m fine. Sorry, it was an off-day.”

“I’m just worried,” Tom placated, but you only heard concern.

“I can do the job,” you told him firmly. You were close to snapping at him, and you hated yourself for the dismay on his face. “I’ll be back to usual by the next shoot. I think everything being so… quiet… freaked me out.”

Tom closed his eyes, sighing heavily. You were surprised to look up and see his head resting on his knuckles, an unusual agitation in the fidgeting of his body language.

The moment passed in silence, and you watched him in concern. Wondering if you ought to be worried too.

“That was unprofessional. Yesterday. I crossed a line.”

He sounded sombre, so sombre it was jarring. You shook your head, surprised by how seriously he was taking this. How much it seemed to really, really nag at him. You wondered if ‘make it real’ was the nicest direction anyone had ever been given in the entire porn industry.

“You were just directing. We saved a lot of money on production,” you offered, “even if the video’s no good, it was free to make.”

He looked at you seriously, piercingly, and you felt pinned to the chair by the way he appeared to look through you.

“It was the best video we’ve ever made.”

You brushed off the comment. He said that all the time.

“I’m sure it’ll do well –”

“No, it… while I was editing, I just kept thinking… It was good.”

You’d seen his crouch yesterday, the speed he’d sent you off to shower. The memory had accompanied you late into the night. He’d definitely liked the shoot.

You wondered if that meant anything. Maybe not.

When you looked across at Tom, he was beet red.

“If you insist,” you shrugged, keen to move on from the moment.

Tom refused.

“That’s why I’m worried. That was your best work but… I feel like you were upset. Freaked out. If I ever cross a boundary like that you need to tell me. I refuse to be some industry creep, if you want someone else there while we film, or –”

“Who would I have, Tom? There’s no one I trust more than you.”

And suddenly his head was in his hands again, a dismayed groan quiet in his throat, and you wondered if he’d lost sleep over yesterday.

You wondered if he’d lost sleep for the same reasons you had.

“Tell me,” he insisted, words firm. “You have to tell me if I ever make you uncomfortable again.”

“I will,” you promised, “but you didn’t make me uncomfortable yesterday. It’s fine, really. I think I was just – ”

Overwhelmed by you.

“Spaced out.”

He didn’t buy it, but the conversation was going nowhere. You stared out the window behind him. There was nothing out there but a car park, but it was better than trying to work out what was happening in the office.

Tom cleared his throat. You tapped your fingers against your laptop.

That email at the top of your inbox was nagging at you.

“Do you think we need a break?” you offered, and Tom’s head shot up, lines appearing between his eyebrows as he searched your expression.

“What do you mean?”

“The studio. We should shut down for a week. I don’t know, pre-record something. You could book a holiday.”

The wry smile on Tom’s lips told you nothing was further from his mind.

“It could be nice,” he conceded, “only if you promise to take a break too.”

Caught.

“I’ve… I’ve been offered another job.”

Tom took his work seriously. It was his passion. He never accepted the industry for what it was – he dedicated every waking hour to making his work the best. It was the reason his kind, overly-sincere, oversized heart beat.

And in the quiet of the office, you could hear his heart breaking.

“Oh.”

“For one shoot! Not – Jesus – not actually another job. Triple Tricks want me to do a shoot. It’ll be like, one day. And I might need some time off afterwards so we could take the week off.”

Tom had blanched at the mention of Triple Tricks. He had winced at the mention of time off. You studied his face, trying to work out which emotion was seizing hold of him now.

It certainly wasn’t joy.

“Tom?”

He stayed quiet. You hated this schtick. He hated the other studio.

“We don’t have an exclusivity clause, do we? I did try and check.”

“What kind of shoot is it?”

He knew. If you needed time off afterwards, he knew. He was making you say it anyway.

“BDSM.”

You’d be bruised. That much was evident. You’d Googled them, heard of them through peers. But fuck the money was good. It would be zero-preparation. The concept was kind of hot, you thought you could sell it. It wasn’t scripted, you just had to… be a body. This wasn’t what Tom made. But you could still be good at it.

“You know I don’t like it,” he sighed, and you shrugged.

“A pay check is a pay check.”

And that was where you and Tom differed. This was more than money to him.

“Sorry,” you added, the word falling flat as you heard it.

“I can’t stop you, and you’re not exclusive to us, I just…”

“Don’t make it weird, Tom.”

“I do all this, we have this amazing shoot day, and you’re planning on working with ‘Tricks?”

He was being stern. You realised it abruptly, realised it from his growl and his carefully controlled volume, and the white of his knuckles as he clasped them together.

“The money is too good,” you retort, trying to match his firmness, and just feeling cold. The words are an apology.

“I’ve offered you more! If you need it, I can lend you – ”

“You don’t need to ‘lend’ me money, Tom! I earn it. Just like you. And now I can earn more. Wouldn’t you do the same? Name one other actress who only works for one studio.”

“I just want you to be safe.”

You frowned.

“Not as your… director. Or business partner. We’re friends, and they’re bastards over there. I just want you safe.”

“They won’t actually hurt me,” you promise, trying to push away the clips you’d seen online. Not really, you reasoned.

Tom’s expression told you he didn’t believe a word of it. And that he wasn’t just worried about physical pain.

“When’s the shoot?”

“I haven’t said yes yet.”

He sighed.

“You wanted to ask me?”

You nodded, and as soon as you saw his face in his hands, you knew your mind was made up. Tom remained quiet, and you wished you could see the inside of his mind.

“If you’re that against it, I won’t do it.”

The expression of relief on his face as so powerful, you weren’t sure you’d ever forget it. He just nodded, offered you a weak smile, and turned to his computer.

*

You weren’t sure how long you stared at the email you’d written, waiting blankly, as if you could send it telekinetically by staring long enough. It was short, polite, and you really hoped they didn’t test your resolve with a higher counteroffer. But it was done. You couldn’t betray Tom’s morals. Not for less than a very nice car, at least.

Tom had posted the video, you only knew because of your notifications, he’d tagged your work accounts social media accounts in everything to promote it. When you looked up at him, he was waiting to speak to you, hair tousled in the way it was when he absentmindedly tugged at it while he worked.

You could see his apology before you heard it.

“I’m sorry for being harsh. I just – I can’t tell you what to do, but please not them. If it’s another ethical studio you’ve got my blessing, but… not that. I can’t see you like that.”

You knew he couldn’t bear it. You were surprised by the relief you felt, hitting send.

A few minutes later he had made tea, settled in for a day of planning out future videos and not much else. These were your favourite days, just fucking around and dreaming up plots with Tom.

A hand settled on your shoulder as he set your mug in front of you, rubbing a little across the fabric of your shirt. You wanted to lean into his touch.

“You’re getting all of it. The money from that video, I mean. You deserve it.”

You frowned. That wasn’t the deal.

“Halves on everything, remember?”

He didn’t respond, but his hand just stayed there, a comforting weight as he stood over you. You could see his reflection in the window glass, the unusually solemn expression on his face.

“Call it an apology. For you turning down a good pay check.”

You smiled tightly, covering his hand with yours. That seemed to shake him out of his own head, giving your shoulder one last squeeze before he walked away from you.

“You did the edit! It’s your studio,” you protested.

“It’s our studio. And the edit… was a privilege. You made it easy.”

Tom closed the door after he left, busy fussing around with the props cupboard or something. You stared blankly down at your keyboard, wondering what the hell was going on inside his head.

*

As they days passed the incident was forgotten, as your easy friendship with Tom returned. You didn’t hesitate a moment turning down Triple Tricks’ second higher offer, too busy enjoying yourself with Tom. It was just the two of you, preparing for a shoot the next day, sharing the familiar space of the office.

“You’ve seen it a hundred times before!” you laughed, watching as Tom covered his eyes with his palm, his other arm reached out as if to warn you away. Your shirt was already off, bra following as you worked out how to get into the medieval princess costume Tom had ‘invested’ in.

“Not in our office! The bloody windows are open! Anyone could see!”

“Oh no! My modesty!” you mocked, ignoring him as you tried on the outfit, laughing at the tackiness of it.

It certainly was a ‘princess’ outfit, all gauze and corset – definitely not historically accurate – and you wondered where the hell Tom had bought this. You usually sourced costumes, but he’d been insisting on doing more recently. You tried to just appreciate the reduced workload, and ignore the nagging worry that you knew the reasons behind it.

“Help me with the corset?”

Groaning and dramatically uncovering his eyes, Tom circled around the desk to you, already eagerly kicking your jeans off. You’d been ecstatic when Tom told you it arrived, eager to just play dress-up, before the damn thing got ruined.

His fingers traced the edge of the fabric, making sure everything laid comfortably against your skin, and you impatiently waited for him to tighten the back of the bodice. Pointedly ignoring his soft, warm fingertips as they traced the material.

When he tentatively pulled the laces tighter you were pleasantly surprised with his costume choices. It fit like a glove. Rushing to a mirror, you ignored the rush of fondness you felt for the man as he eagerly followed.

“My tits look great!”

He fidgeted, one hand rubbing the back of his neck, and you tried not to relish in the blush painting his cheeks. He did that a lot recently: blushing. It was delightful, to see it reflected in the mirror.

“I, um, yeah.”

Turning to face him, he finally broke into a laugh, hands finding your elbows in that casual way he liked to touch you.

“What’s the end game here? I get fucked by a bunch of knights?”

He snorted, still fussing with the lacing behind you, and you bit your lip as his fingers tested the give of the fabric to make sure you weren’t being crushed.

“You make it sound so romantic. Haven’t you read the script?”

“Not yet. Sorry, Tommy.”

He tugged on the laces suddenly, making you jerk back an inch, grumbling as he laughed. The tightness of the fabric against your torso when he did that didn’t feel half bad. You filed that away for another day.

“What’s your plot then?” you teased, turning to face him.

You hadn’t realised you were practically in his arms, and you saw his gaze shift down from your face for a second before he spoke.

“A competition? For your hand in marriage?”

He crouched teasingly, lifting your hand, and for a split second you wondered if he was actually planning on kissing your knuckles. Nope.

A glance through the open door reminded you why you were here.

“That’s a common fantasy, right?” he faltered, the teasing edge of his voice dulled just a little with questioning.

“Yeah, yeah. For sure. I’m not sure about in porn though.”

He pursed his lips, thinking, as you finally got the hips of the dress situated and stepped into the studio to find a mirror.

He followed you as you examined how your body looked in the costume, and you caught the quirk of his lip as you spun, not hiding your excitement.

“You haven’t asked me what kind of competition,” he taunted. You took the bait.

“What kind?”

“Who can make you cum first?”

For just a moment, you didn’t know what to say. The outfit took on a whole new meaning as you imagined the shoot, where you would be in twenty-four hours’ time.

“You do know the way to a woman’s heart,” you hummed, not quite realising the implication to your words until you’ve said them. “I mean, what makes them tick. That’s hot.”

He chuckled.

“Glad you approve.”

There was a reupholstered chaise in the studio that he’d bought for the shoot, and you’d been enjoying lounging on it. Tomorrow you wondered if you’ve be enjoying it more, or cursing Tom.

Depended on the guys, you supposed.

“Who’ve you got?”

“Three guys, and a girl. Two of the guys are twins, it’s their whole thing. Seems as bit weird, but whatever.”

You frowned. Was that in the budget?

“That’s expensive, and… I don’t know them?”

He looked away from you in the reflection.

“I put it all on the spreadsheets. I didn’t’ want to bother you – ”

God. If he’d fucked up those cashflow statements, you were going to throttle him. He knew it, too. The corset just made you angrier as it restricted your ability to inhale and shout at him.

“They’re going to be inside me, Tom. I’d prefer if you bothered me.”

He winced, and you immediately regretted being so snappy, seeing the tightening of his broad shoulders as he stood beside you in the mirror.

“I… that’s fair. Sorry,”

You let the argument pass, a silent acceptance of his apology as you fidgeted with the costume again. He was trying. You trusted him.

The two of you definitely needed to talk.

“If I’m gonna be a princess I should have a tiara,” you teased lightly, eager to nitpick anything, just for Tom to be wrong.

Instead he smiled, smarmy bastard, disappearing into his office and returning with a tacky jewellery box.

“Your highness,” he held it out to you, and you rolled your eyes, frustrated by how quickly his stupid antics could win you back.

Flipping open the lid of the box, he revealed a surprisingly nice tiara. Certainly more a bit nicer than the plastic prop jewellery you’d expected, though certainly nothing outrageous. He set it delicately on your hair, wary of damaging it. You laughed at it immediately fell half-way out, sitting crooked an inch above your forehead.

“Absolutely majestic,” Tom teased lightly, but you sensed the underlying tension in his voice. An olive branch.

“Good choice,” you approved, reaching up to properly fix the piece in your hair.

In the mirror, you caught Tom beam.

*

The shoot ran perfectly. Like clockwork. Everyone was lovely to you, nothing chaffed, and you wondered if Tom’s guilt was the solution to finally having a problem-free shoot day. Well, aside from that other problem-free shoot day. But the two of you didn’t talk about that, even as the video had exploded in popularity. You were enjoying a healthy income stream from it.

You had no doubt this video would do well too. It had been hot, at least from what you’d seen in the monitor. It was more like Tom’s usual productions, full of reshoots and dialogue and an entire storyline which culminated in you reclined on the chaise, corset shoved below your bust and skirts pushed up.

For a whole afternoon you had just followed Tom’s commands on how much you were supposed to be enjoying the various different fingers, cocks and mouths of your costars. It didn’t escape your notice that he hadn’t written you anything remotely difficult for weeks.

“Lay back and look pretty,” he’d winked to you between conversations with the rest of the cast and crew, and you had smirked from your chaise.

Inwardly, you wondered what the hell was going on.

The tiara had pressed against your scalp as you’d been fucked, and the reminder of Tom’s sweetness made it difficult to keep your gaze on your costars. There was a tall figure behind the cameras seemingly begging for your attention. You realised you had forgotten to react for a few seconds, so distracted by your own thoughts, faking a moan as one of the men shoved just a little too deep into you.

“Wait!”

Fuck.

Tom must have seen you wince. The man – Michael, you forced yourself to remember – nodded to you apologetically, stroking more lube onto himself at Tom’s behest. He was the last of the actors to have a turn at pleasing you, and frankly you were exhausted.

“We can redo that with a close up, then we’ll move on,” Tom was declaring, but your mind was elsewhere, your body in that strange state of physical pleasure and emotional detachment. Your mind was elsewhere.

The chill of the room was getting to you, and you caught yourself shivering as the cameras were moved.

“Okay, sweetheart?”

You nodded, blinking in surprise at the feeling of Tom’s hand cupping your jaw, refusing to meet his eyes. He’d see right through you if you made eye contact. Satisfied, he moved on, behind the cameras again barking the politest orders to prepare for a few close up shots.

Oh, god. Time to go again.

Michael muttered an apology as his hands found your bare breast again, pinching at your nipple to make it harden again, and in that moment of tenderness you saw something familiar in his blue eyes.

“You are beautiful, you know.”

If you closed your eyes, that voice could belong to someone else.

You smiled, surprised by a more genuine sense of arousal settling deep in your stomach. As Michael gently probed a couple of fingers inside of you, testing you were wet enough to take him again, you had to bite back a moan.

He noticed. Of course he did. With a near-clinical curiosity he sought out your g-spot, gently pressing against it, and you felt yourself clench at the light chuckle he made.

“This could be fun,” he whispered to you, and you bit your lip, melting ever so slightly more into the chaise as he withdrew his fingers with a final stretch, rubbing a few hard circles on your clit as he left.

When Tom called action, you barely heard. You were too busy thinking about how much you actually wanted what was about to happen next. This wasn’t just fun, or pleasure. You needed it.

All the shot called for was Michael fucking you. He had to be ‘the best’ as Tom’s script had dictated. You weren’t aware he would be quite such a good fit for the role. He teased you with few shallow thrusts before doing what the shot demanded, his thick cock spearing into you in a way that made you gasp for air and clench at the sheer size of him.

He was grunting, saying something which fitted Tom’s storyline, but all you could do was take him. You were focusing on breathing, on reacting, you had no memory of what the script had said. You could barely remember his name. His fingers on your clit were giving you plenty of reason to forget everything, surprisingly dexterous as he fucked into you with the same pace as those tight little circles which were driving you closer and closer to forgetting you were on camera.

“Go on, sweetheart.”

That wasn’t in the script. It wasn’t even for the microphones. As he fucked you into the chaise, one hand bracing and the other working your clit like it was actually part of his job, Michael whispered only to you. And fuck, you could have sworn that ‘sweetheart’ sounded identical to how Tom said it.

You tried. You tried to be professional, to wait for instruction to fake an orgasm, but damn it Michael was good. He was pounding into you and pleasuring your clit and talking like that, and before you knew it he was pausing slammed inside of you so you could moan through an orgasm. With your eyes screwed shut and your senses overwhelmed, you clung to him, desperate for him not to stop with those damn circles on your clit, damn whatever the script called for.

In your most impressive acting to date, you remembered to moan the character’s name as your pussy continued to clench and spasm, Michael pulling out to finish messily on your stomach as you remained in a daze.

When the crew finally called cut you barely had the energy to sit upright.

And through it all, you wondered if Tom liked the shoot.

There was a typical shuffle as the crew packed up, as Tom paid the actors and bid them goodbye, typical chatter and panting and offers of water and showers which everyone declined. It took less than quarter of an hour for everyone to leave, and you barely moved from the chaise. In a robe, clutching an unopened water bottle, you were left in a silent room. The locking of the door, Tom’s footsteps. The dull ache inside you and the numbness that seemed to overcome you during every shoot lately.

Ever since that one damn solo video –

“Can I join you?”

“Of course.”

You moved your robe to let Tom side beside you, wincing for his nice trousers as he sat beside you on the sweat-stained burgundy velvet. You knew you should talk, say something lighthearted, move to face him, something.Your mind felt a million miles away as the cushion beneath you shifted with Tom’s weight, his solid body faintly comforting beside you.

“This needs cleaning,” he mused, no real urgency in his tone.

He was testing the waters.

Reply, you mind screamed. Your face fell to your hands, a deep sigh leaving your lungs. Tom fidgeted, fingers on the velvet between you, not quite ready to reach out.

“Are you okay, love?”

“Tired.”

One strong arm wrapped around you, making your robe shift against your warm skin, and you leant into Tom without a second though.

“What’s wrong?”

His voice dropped to a murmur, and you wanted to cry. And you weren’t sure why. Fuck.

“I’m really not sure,” you admitted, “I don’t know, Tom.”

Your voice caught as you spoke, tears threatening your eyes, and you could practically feel the change in Tom as realised how upset you were. His whole body shifted, pulling you against him, leaning back on the chaise and holding you to his side. You turned your face against the plane of his chest, makeup no-doubt ruining his white shirt, leaning your entire upper body on him.

And to your horror, you realised you were crying.

Tom said nothing. He just held you while you ruined his shirt with slow, quiet tears.

Then it was over. Out of your system. And Tom was still there, warm and strong and underneath you. You cleared your throat, pushing off him until you were just leaning against him, sitting under your own strength.

For the brief second you could looked to his face, you saw open worry on his features. You looked away again quickly, guilt filling you at the distress you were causing him. You wiped at your eyes, embarrassed. It had been minutes, but you had sobbed on him, still reeking of sex, barely covered by a robe. You tried to be subtle as you hid your face from him.

“How is this my life,” you muttered, pleasantly surprised as Tom broke out into a nervous laugh.

He stopped as you glanced at him, but you shot him a smile, careful to try and rebuild your sense of stability as he watched you. And not be an emotional wreck. You winced as you shuffled in your seat, twisting so you could talk.

“Overwhelming?”

You nodded.

“That’s an understatement.”

“You did brilliantly today,” he told you earnestly, “I’m sorry it was such a long shoot. One of those overproduced ones today, you know. Too many moving parts.”

You smiled, trying to conceal your amusement.

“I am well aware.”

“Right.”

You loved the pink dusting his cheeks as he looked down to his lap, a self-depreciating laugh on his lips.

“Sorry,” he murmured, “if it makes you feel any better, I think I’m going to be editing this for the rest of my life. We’ve almost run out of SD cards, there was so much footage.”

You snorted.

“It’ll be, like, three hours editing max.”

“It’ll be forever,” he whined, “I’m going to die editing.”

He was being a drama queen, one hand on his face and the other wrapped around your shoulder as he acted up. Trying to make you laugh. Just the sweetness of the gesture was enough to make you feel better.

“We can do it together, grab some takeaway, make a day of it,” you offered.

Tom looked ready to argue, to give you more time off, but instead his shoulders softened and he nodded.

“That sounds great, love.”

For a second the two of you looked around the studio, the empty space and the dents in the floor which had accumulated over the years, the white walls and the scattered equipment. The strange space which had started to feel like a second home, after all the time you’d spent here together.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

His words were quiet, laced with concern that he tried to dress in a light-hearted cadence, lips near the crown of your head as he asked.

“Overwhelmed,” you reassured him, “just tired. I just got a bit emotional. I’ll be fine, though. Just needed a cry, I think.”

“I can understand that.”

You wondered if he could. If he’d let you be there for him, comfort him like he’d comforted you. You hoped he would. The smudge of your makeup on his shirt was barely noticeable, and he batted you away as you tried to rub at it.

“It’ll come out.”

“It won’t,” you promised, and Tom rolled his eyes.

“It can go to the costume department then.”

“’Department’,” you snorted, gesturing to the tiny props room.

Tom’s hand on your shoulder tightened playfully, a more pleasant quiet settling over the two of you this time, both of you lost in thought. He interrupted your daydreaming suddenly, with an awkward clearing of his throat and a roll of his shoulders before he spoke.

“Can you be honest with me? It won’t affect how incredibly highly I think of your skill.”

You knew the question Tom was about to ask, and frankly you were surprised he had brought it up at all. But you sighed, nodded against him. Your pussy still ached.

“Yes?”

“Did Michael make you… orgasm? At the end there?”

You nodded, lips pressed tightly together, and waited for Tom’s reaction. It was understated. He pulled his arm a little tighter around your shoulder.

“Wow.”

His response made you laugh, and he joined you, astounded.

“Good for Michael.”

“I know, right? I hope you paid him a bonus.”

Tom huffed.

“For distracting my lead? I don’t think so.”

“’Distracting?’” you teased, “I think you mean ‘helping’. You know I’m not that good at acting.”

“Nonsense,” he chided.

You shoved your shoulder against his slightly, and he exhaled dramatically in complaint, though you were sure he’d barely felt it. His thumb snaked further across your shoulder, kneading into the tense muscle of your neck. He was being serious again, and you felt yourself stiffening even under the touch of his hand.

“I, um, I owe you an apology. I should have consulted you more on the script. Checked what you were okay with, let you choose actors. And the budget… it’s over. I think it’s worth it but I –”

His hand had stilled on your neck, and you found it hard to distract yourself from the feeling of it against your robe.

“Tom it’s fine. Just… don’t do it again, you know?”

“Of course.”

He really meant it. You loved that about Tom. He always really meant it. That made it more fun to tease him, too.

“Although I do enjoy you going so easy on me recently,” you teased, knee bumping his.

You felt his chuckle as clearly as you heard it, tinged with awkwardness at being caught.

“You’re getting famous these days, can’t have you running off to someone else because I didn’t treat you well enough.”

“Tom…”

“I’m serious!” he protested, and you realised suddenly that he was really worried.

Worried you would leave him. Professionally, of course.

“Besides,” he continued, “why would I make you do anything worse than you have to?”

He wasn’t just talking about the books. Those emails from the BDSM studio had shaken him more than you’d realised. He’d read the second offer, raising his eyebrows at the number after you left your phone flat on the desk, and you wished he hadn’t seen it.

You half expected him to start forcing cash into your hands before you left, he was so desperate to compete. But you didn’t work with him for the money.

“This is my job, Tom. I’ll do whatever I have to.”

He sighed.

“I know, and you’re amazing at it, don’t get me wrong. But you shouldn’t have to do more than you want. Your numbers are great, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep going. We can get more people on board, you can work less – “

You frowned, and he picked up on your worry immediately.

“I’m not firing you! I just think, you’re so good off camera too, and we make so much…”

Fidgeting on the chaise until you could speak face to face, you found his forehead lined with worry, and insecurity painting his face which didn’t suit him in the slightest.

“I’ll tell you if I’m unhappy,” you promised, “but I don’t need to be wrapped in cotton wool, I’m fine.”

He didn’t believe you. You didn’t believe you. As his thumb started to smooth across your shoulder soothingly, you tried not to think too much about why.

“I don’t want you being uncomfortable – or worse – when you don’t have to be.”

You cleared your throat, coughing as you swallowed awkwardly, and winced at the immediate distress on Tom’s face.

You knew both of you were reminded of the same moment, of Tom rushing into a shot, of the actor who’d accidentally gone too far, not noticing he was ramming his cock into your throat too hard until you gagged and coughed and coughed. You’d been watery-eyed and coughing an hour later, long after Tom had called the shoot off and wrapped you in a robe, and then into his arms. He’d pulled you close on the couch in his office, muttering apologies into your hair until you hadn’t wanted to hear the word sorry ever again, your voice hoarse as you promised and promised it wasn’t his fault.

It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but both of you had almost quit that day.

Your throat had hurt for weeks. Tom had been angry for longer, blaming himself as though something a thousand times worse had happened. On the chaise, he was holding you like that again.

Like you needed his comfort. His protection.

You often wondered if it was the other way around. Like he needed to feel like he was protecting you.

“We don’t have to do that anymore,” he soothed, “we can just let you enjoy shoots. I know they’re work but –

One word stuck like shrapnel into your chest.

We.

On the chaise, Tom was reaching for your water bottle, opening it for you and silently imploring you to drink. If only for his sanity.

Between gulps you insisted: “I’m fine.”

He didn’t believe you.

“Go and shower, love. I’ll drive you home.”

[jinfilms]

mobile header tutorial

hello! I’m here to share how to create a header similar to these that i’ve done in the past. here are the tools i’m using:

photoshop cc 2018 (from @birdysources)

some picture of hoseok probably from either twitter or weverse i don’t remember lol

i included pictures and tried to make it VERY beginner friendly, but please, send me an ask or dm if i’m unclear at any point. it’s 2:38 am as i’m making this tutorial and i just downed my cold brew so i’m sorry if it’s messy

1: open your picture in photoshop (here’s the picture of hobi if u wanna follow along)

2: find the quick selection tool

you’ll find it in the left sidebar, fourth from the top. i’ll often use this and the tool above it (polygonal lasso tool) depending on the photo. the quick selection tool is faster but more tedious, in my opinion, but hoseok was easy enough to cut out just using the quick select. use both! whatever u are comfortable with. 

here are my settings for the tool:

i almost always keep it at 3px. unless the image is huge, then i’ll go up to 5px, but never really above that. 

3: trace over your subject(s) (aka hobi) by dragging the tool along the edges, until you’re happy with the accuracy: 

4: find Select and Mask (directly above the image):

and here are the settings i’m using:

then press ‘Ok’ !

5: Select Inverse (right click inside subject)

now we’re going to press ‘backspace’ on your keyboard, and the background will be gone~ 

make sure your file isn’t locked! it should be labeled ‘Layer 0′ and not ‘Background’ (if it’s locked, just double click it and press ‘Ok’ on the window that pops up)

after pressing backspace to delete the background, it should look like this: 

then deselect it all. now is the time to look closer at your newly made render and see if there’s any cleaning up to do. i’m good to go, so i’m gonna continue on with making my header. 

tip: drag the subject (hobi) with the move tool (very top tool on your left sidebar) to the center so he’s in the very middle. it should click to the center (you’ll see the pink line) 

it’s not necessary for the tutorial but if you plan on saving this render as a .png and dispersing the renders you make-- it’s just cleaner looking to have them centered! 

6: File > New 

i always use 800 x 430 for mobile headers. for gifs, i size it down to 650 x 349.

7: resize and drag hobi into the new canvas (Image > Image Resize) 

for single subjects like this i usually resize them to ~300 to ~400. whatever you think looks best tbh

now drag the file from its place up top:

then the file from where it’s labeled ‘Layer 0′

8: now hobi is inside the canvas where the actual header is going to be made~ you can get rid of the render, or save it as a .png, whatever u plan on doing w it

i’m gonna center my hobi for the header i plan on making! from this point it’s just gonna be coloring, sharpening, etc. if you’re interested in using any textures like flowers or bring in other renders of objects, DeviantArt is a great place to search for texture packs. @beapanda on DeviantArt makes beautiful resources (kpop and non kpop related) be sure to credit them or whoever u save ur textures from! 

for this header i’m not going to be using any outside resources, i just want my hobi to be the focus~ 

for the background, i’m gonna use a gradient from this site (this pack is 200 images. phew) 

i’m using no. 200 from that pack.

9: optional- i’m gonna make some extra layers and start coloring hobi using clipping masks. 

make a new layer > right click the new layer and find ‘create clippink mask’ > set the layer to either color, overlay, or multiply (whatever you think looks best and does what u are trying to achieve)

here i’ve just make layers to color things like his hair, his hoodie, and baby mang

here’s with vs without: 

and when you’re done, go ahead and right click your primary layer (subject layer) and click ‘merge clipping mask’.

10: coloring~ 

find a psd you like or being to color the header yourself. for this header i’m gonna be using a homemade psd. i’m not gonna go into detail bc there are sooo many places to find psds on tumblr and deviantart. just like you brought hobi into the header canvas, drag your psd there, and that’s how u apply a psd. 

when u are happy with the coloring, right click the bottom layer and flatten the image. 

11: topaz clean + unmask sharpen

topaz clean is an addition u have to manually add to your photoshop program. u can google how to do it, but if anyone’s struggling i can show u how i did if i remember (but i’m pretty sure i do)

topaz settings:

unsharp mask settings (go to filter > sharpen > unsharp mask): 

honestly, topaz is completely unnecessary, but i like the way it looks so i’m gonna go with it anyway. sharpening the header alone will still give you a great outcome

12: final step, header border time~

over on my film/tv blog @gusdapperton​ i’ve made a header template pack (click here if u just wanna use my premade borders) but for this tutorial i’m gonna show u how i actually made those (minus the cloud one, i was just fucking around lol) (it’s so simple)

>>> if u DO just save one of the borders i made in that pack, resize it so the width is at 800 and drag it to your header canvas. set the layer to ‘screen’ and bang there u go! 

BUT with that method u can’t change the color from white. so if u want a border with any other color, keep following the tutorial >>>

go to view > rulers and select that to show the rulers (duh)

click from inside the ruler (light grey) and drag out your guides. here are where i’m placing mine:

they should ‘snap’ right into place, but if they don’t, make sure u go to view > snap and that’ll fix it. u will know what i mean once u try it lol

select the curvature pen tool (right click the pen tool to show more tool options):

and begin to place your dots. thanks to the guides, these dots will also snap into place

here are mine: 

(i eyeballed the two in the middle, it doesn’t need to look perfect tbh)

this next step is sorta stupid but i haven’t found a better way to do it yet lol

to close the shape just make sure to closely follow the direction of the dot you last placed, then go around to make your way back to the first... it looks silly but like this:

just play around with the shape and the tool... u will get the hang of it lol

now look up ^ and press Selection

then ‘Ok’ in the next window. then boom~ there’s your selection for the border we’re about to make.

make a new layer then select the rectangular marquee tool (second from the top on the left sidebar) and either drag with your mouse or use the arrow keys to move the selection we just made. here is where i’m placing mine:

then select your paint bucket tool (if you can’t find it, right click the gradient tool and it’ll be one of the sub tools, like i showed u with the pen tool)

make a new layer, then fill it in (i’m using white)

you can stop there, but to make that line like i did in my border template pack, press the down arrow on your keyboard and go down 5-10 pixels, press backspace, go down the same amount of pixels, and re-fill that area. 

now unselect. there’s the border~ 

now go to view > clear guides to get rid of those. u don’t need em anymore :) i’m also going to move the border we’ve just made down to the bottom of the canvas since we don’t need that big gap there. 

>>> tip, don’t fill in the white directly on the layer if you wanna change the color. create a new layer on top of the border layer, right click > create clipping mask > fill the layer with the color u want for the background. example: 

it saves the integrity of the shape. if you color fill right over the white, look closely and you’ll see it looks sort of pixelated and not as clean or smooth. it’s subtle but noticeable enough to me where it bothers me. 

since this color i chose is kinda vibrant and clashes, i’m gonna help it out some. go back to the quick select tool and select everything inside your border layer. make a new layer, fill the layer with black (any color will do, it doesn’t matter) and set the fill to 0%. double click that new layer, and a new screen will pop up. go to drop shadow, find the settings you like, and boom. here’s what i did and what it’ll look like: 

now u are finished~ i didn’t do this but u can skip sharpening the header earlier in the tutorial and reflatten the image again to sharpen it at this point instead but, yknow, i didn’t do that lol

here’s the final product (save by going to file > export > save for web)

preview of how it looks on mobile:

background: 8bd4ed

the end~ please send me an ask or dm if you haven any further questions, i will try my hardest to help <3

[dvp95]

quiet on widow’s peak (10)

pairing: dan howell/phil lester, pj liguori/sophie newton/chris kendall rating: teen & up tags: paranormal investigator, mystery, online friendship, slow burn, strangers to lovers, nonbinary character, trans character, background poly, phil does some buzzfeed unsolved shit and dan is a fan word count: 2.8k (this chapter), 32.4k (total) summary: Phil’s got a list of paranormal experiences a mile long that he likes to share with the world. Abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and ghost stories have always called his name, and a particular fan of his has a really, really good ghost story.

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

They try everything. Sophie handles the cameras and phones while Phil and Chris spend way too long cleaning up files on their laptops and doing what they can to get any clear images out of the mess. It's no use. By the time PJ returns from driving Dan home, all they've accomplished is figuring out that the corruption is on their devices, not on the exported files. No matter what they do, the videos and pictures they took have the effect of being scrambled, like someone has pressed fast forward and also put a noise filter over them. The sound is no better - there's a high-pitched sort of ringing in all of the video and audio recordings that Phil can't understand the source of. Some files won't open altogether.

"How does this even happen?" Sophie mutters, bent over Chris' phone with a furrowed brow. "There's nothing left. Like, at all."

"We still have footage from the first night," says Phil. He's trying his very best to stay positive, but this is unbelievably frustrating. They experienced something last night, even if they can't agree on what it was, and they're supposed to start driving back to Brighton before it gets too dark. They don't have time for this. "With the shadow, you know."

His friends make grunts of irritated agreement. Phil knows that all of them are disappointed and a little angry about the lack of evidence for their hellish night, almost like they went through it for nothing, but he doesn't have anything comforting to say.

Phil has never been very good at comfort. He's good at distracting people and forcing optimism, but seeing such visceral emotions from his usually mild housemates makes him want to retreat into himself. He takes his glasses off to rub at his eyes, fighting off a budding headache.

"That's not really enough for a video, though, is it," says PJ. "I mean, you're not going to convince anyone with just a shadow."

"Well, we can't stay to try and get more," Chris says with a little huff.

"I can," Phil points out. He doesn't think he wants to, really, because this whole situation skeeves him out and going back alone would not help, but he needs there to be a purpose to his friends' suffering or he'll never forgive himself. He stares at his unfocused laptop screen, full of files that don't work, and wonders if they're going to bother to try and stop him. "I mean, you guys all have work tomorrow. I don't have anywhere to be. And I kind of want to see this through, so I can, like… take the train home when it's done."

There's a moment of quiet. Phil feels his shoulders tense at the possibility that he's going to have to argue his way into this. It's his job. Plus, he already knows his parents are going to have a problem with him staying longer to investigate, and fighting with yet another set of well-meaning people is more than he wants to do.

"Normally I'd be like, whatever," says PJ. "You know what you're doing and you do this sort of shit alone all the time. But, Phil, how the fuck do you think the paralysis will work if you're by yourself?"

"I won't try to sleep there," Phil decides, shoving his glasses back onto his face. "That's the only time it's happened, right? When people are already falling asleep?"

PJ's mouth twists unhappily, but he doesn't protest further. Phil wonders if he's actually won this argument or if PJ is just too tired from bickering with Dan about cryptids, or whatever they talked about on the drive. Thinking about Dan is a distraction, and not exactly a welcome one. Phil doesn't know how he feels - or even if he should be feeling anything at all - and he doesn't want to add that crisis on top of the one he's already dealing with.

"So you're just going to go there," says Chris. "Alone. And then poke around and go home?"

"That's what I do in most haunts."

"Fair play. Carry on."

It's almost funny how quickly PJ's expression nosedives into aghast. "What? That's it? You're not putting up more of a fight?"

"Why bother?" Chris asks with a little shrug. "He's a stubborn bellend."

"Hey," Phil half-heartedly protests. His friends don't deign to acknowledge it.

"You should bring a sigil with you," says Sophie. Her voice is soft and tired, but her eyes are kind in a way that PJ and Chris don't bother to be. "Why don't you bring something down that you'd have on you, and we'll all put something on it?"

"Really?" Chris asks. It's impossible to tell what he's thinking. Phil doesn't know if he thinks the idea is good or stupid, but he nods after Sophie does. "Alright, we can do that."

PJ is looking off into the distance while cogs seem to turn in his head. "Something you'll have physically on you, Philly, since we can't put it on your skin itself. Let us draw on your glasses or jacket or -"

"Knickers," Chris chimes in.

"Or your knickers," PJ agrees, far more solemnly than Phil thinks is necessary.

It doesn't seem like it'll actually help, but Phil feels so much affection and gratitude for his friends wanting to protect him in any way they can that he doesn't argue.

Phil doesn't really like the idea of going to the Wilkins place alone, either, but he's a lot more comfortable doing that than dragging his innocent friends along for the awful ride again. He thinks about Sophie's kind eyes staring up at the ceiling blankly, the way PJ gasped when he woke up, Chris trying to hide his own concern about the situation, and he feels his resolve stiffen even more.

Maybe he is a stubborn bellend. This is his responsibility, though. It's not right for him to keep asking for help. Phil lets the conversation flow to what snacks they're going to get for the drive and thinks about how he's going to break the situation to his parents.

--

It doesn't feel as satisfying to shut the door of his childhood bedroom, now. Maybe it's the fact that he's too mature to slam it, or maybe it's that the room itself isn't the haven it used to be. All the neutral colours and boring pieces of art are like a constant visual reminder that his life isn't here anymore.

He doesn't want it to be here. That isn't the problem. It feels stupid if he thinks about it for too long, but he grew up in this house. He's got scars from the sharp corners of the old furniture and more memories than he has in any other singular location. Sure, it makes sense that his parents are retiring and want to downsize from a big, empty house, but Phil really isn't comfortable with this level of change. He kind of assumed he'd always be able to come visit and feel at home again.

Phil sinks onto the mattress. For a long moment, he seriously considers going to sleep. It's barely past seven, but he didn't sleep well this morning. At least if he's unconscious he doesn't need to deal with the crushing weight of his parents' disappointment and worry.

The decision is made for him when his phone buzzes with a notification from Tumblr.

tell ur parents thanks for letting me stay and tell pj thanks for bringing me home and tell urself thanks for the uhhhh experience lmao its deffo not one im gonna forget anytime soon

Phil huffs a laugh and gets comfortable. You're very welcome. I'll tell them when I come out of hiding.

arent you in a very small car on your way to brighton mate… how tf do you manage to hide in there when youre huge

Oh I'm not in the car, I'm still at my parents' place. It's a long story and I hate typing a bunch on my phone. Phil grimaces at himself for the way that sounds, like he's cutting off any questions Dan might have before they ask. He sends another message. Voice call me on Skype or something if you wanna hear about my no good, very bad day.

He doesn't expect Dan to actually call him, let alone immediately, but Phil's phone starts buzzing with a Skype call before he's collected himself enough to find his headphones. He's still detangling while he answers with a sheepish, "Oh, hello!"

"Hi," says Dan. Their voice is low and amused, and Phil can't believe how nice it is to hear after only a handful of hours.

"I'm woefully unprepared, as per usual," Phil rambles, finally getting his headphones in and grinning at the bland wall in front of him. Nobody is here to judge him for it. "You, er, got home alright?"

"Obviously yes," says Dan. "So, you had a bad day?"

"'Cause you had a bad day," Phil sings back to them. The sound of Dan's giggle makes any embarrassment worth it, he thinks. "Yeah, uh, it was rough. So we wanted to look over the footage from last night to see what the camera caught, y'know, but… I don't know how, I don't have an explanation for it, but everything is corrupted. Our audio, our video, our photos. They're all beyond repair."

There's a few moments of silence, where Phil would think Skype had frozen if he couldn't still hear the faint music on Dan's end. Then, "What? You - what? We don't have anything?"

Phil likes the sound of 'we'. He probably shouldn't.

"We tried everything," Phil explains, his heart feeling heavy all over again at the reminder that they spent hours terrified for nothing. "But the corruption isn't even in the exported files, it's on our devices themselves. Chris' phone, our cameras… they're all fucked."

"If you're swearing, it must be fucking serious," says Dan. Phil wants to interrupt then, explain that his policy on bleeping out curses is more about staying monetized and keeping his parents happy than any personal morals, but Dan has already shot past the topic at the speed of light. "So basically we've got no proof we were ever there, let alone that something weird happened - which I'm not saying is some kind of fucking paranormal shit, by the way, but it was weird - and now you've got nothing to make a video with and I never should have told you about this place to begin with?"

"Dan, breathe." Phil waits until he's sure that Dan is at least trying to follow the directive. "It's okay. I'm glad you brought me here. And that's why I'm still in town - I'm going to get more footage."

"Not alone, you're not," Dan says fiercely.

"Peej and the other Scoobs already went home. I just didn't go with them."

"I don't care where your friends are," says Dan. Phil can almost see their hand waving dismissively. "You're not going back there alone. End of story."

The clear insistence in Dan's voice should be getting Phil's back up against the wall. He hates being told what to do with his own projects, needs to be in complete control whenever possible. Instead, he finds himself thinking that it's sweet of Dan to worry like that.

Christ, but he's got it bad.

"I'm still in town either way," Phil says, picking at a loose thread in his sleeve absent-mindedly. "Which my parents are, uh, not thrilled about."

"Really?" Dan sounds genuinely surprised. "They seem like they really love you, mate."

Love has never been the issue. That feels strange to think, cocky almost, but Phil has never really worried that his parents won't love him. Even with the secrets he keeps from them and their fears about the way he lives his life, the worst he's ever expected is disappointment. That just isn't the way their relationship works.

"Oh, they do," says Phil. "But they hate my job, and they think that it's stupid of me to keep investigating a place that clearly doesn't want to be investigated. They believe in ghosts and demons and all that jazz, y'know, they think I'm inviting evil into my life, so they said they'd let me stay here while I work but that we're going to have a 'serious discussion' about my life trajectory when I'm done."

"Ouch. I'd hate that conversation."

"Trust me, it's going to suck. I just got the preview today, and I already know I'm going to want to run away to Iceland."

There's a beat. Then, Dan says, "At least when you're there you can look into the hidden people. You know, the Icelandic elves or whatever that live in a parallel world. That seems up your alley."

"Your mum lives in a parallel world," Phil mutters.

Dan giggles. The sound of it is soft, like they're aware of their own volume, and Phil remembers that Dan lives in some kind of housing with a bunch of other students. He still loves the sound, so much so that he drifts into a nonsensical daydream of making Dan laugh as much as possible and almost misses Dan's voice coming through his headphones again.

"Since you're still in town," Dan is saying, and Phil makes a conscious effort to tune back in, "you should come by the shop tomorrow. I have an early class, but I'm starting work at eleven."

The prospect of seeing Dan again is such a good one that Phil doesn't even hesitate before he's agreeing. It'll be a bit of an effort to get out of bed early enough to avoid his parents and catch Dan for a good amount of time, but Phil feels like it's definitely going to be worth it. He likes Dan, likes being around them if absolutely nothing else, and the ill-advised butterflies in his stomach aren't enough to make him fall on the side of finding this a bad idea.

It isn't until after he's hung up and getting himself a sandwich so he doesn't have to eat an awkward dinner with his parents that Phil realises he's going to have Dan all to himself tomorrow. Well, to himself and to whatever patrons come into the coffee shop. The force of those warm eyes, just focused on him… it's going to test Phil in a way he's not sure he's ready for.

He turns away from the fridge and almost jumps out of his skin.

"Mum," he complains, free hand clutched to his chest. "Don't just stand there, you scared me!"

A smile tugs at Kath's lips, but her arms are crossed and her eyes are staring into Phil's very soul. He feels cornered all of a sudden, like he ought to be clawing for escape.

"Philip," she says, all warmth. There's that slight edge that he remembers so clearly from mishaps as a child, but for the most part it seems like she isn't here to lecture him. He imagines that's going to come from both of them. "This thing that you insist on doing… it's dangerous. You must know that, love."

Phil doesn't actually know that. For the most part, his career hasn't given him anything but boredom and a complex about his own creativity. It's just the odd cases, the ones like the Wilkins house, that get him squirrelly.

"I know, mum," he says anyway. It isn't worth the argument. "But this is my job."

"It doesn't need to be," she presses, and Phil realises that his assumption was very, very wrong. They're going to divide and conquer. She continues like she hasn't noticed the way his whole body is tensing up. "You have such a wonderful mind and loads of ambition, my dear. And that imagination! Gosh, you could do anything that you set your mind to."

Anything he set his mind to - if he actually tried. Phil can hear the words that she isn't saying, that his dad will have no trouble voicing later, and he feels the familiar burn in his throat like he's going to start crying.

He won't. He doesn't cry much, as a rule, but he's well-acquainted with the sensation of holding it back.

"I know that I can," says Phil quietly. He looks down at his sandwich. He isn't very hungry anymore. "Mum, I'm not - I don't do this because I - you know, I like my job."

That's not exactly the truth anymore, but Phil is also well-acquainted with the art of lying to his mother. She doesn't need to know about the doubts that plague Phil, the way that he's felt like he's slogging through videos until they catch his interest properly. That's something he can figure out on his own. He forces his eyes back up at her to drive the point home with a sincere, pleading sort of look.

Her mouth twists, unhappily this time.

"You need to grow up sometime, Phil," she says, so soft that it almost cushions the devastating blow of her words.

Almost.

[vergess]

You know. It didn’t occur to me that the text files 8tracks spits out would strip the tags from these playlists. I only just realized that about 20 minutes ago, after peeling a few hundred tracklists, because spotify has cut me off again for the day.

Even if a playlist contains songs that can all be sourced from other archives, which is a BIG FUCKING IF, without any tags to better understand the intended context of the track list... what’s the point. It’s just a weird assortment of maybe related songs, at that point. What are you supposed to do with it?

God, what’s the fucking point.

They made this so hard. They made it functionally impossible, with only the barest fig leaf of an excuse.

No tags, no downloads, no functioning exports, and for a lot of peopel who paid for the service, no refunds either.

I hate this.

I hate that companies just get to do this. Just get to annihilate huge swathes of art from the world without notice, without remose, without recourse.

It’s torture. This is torture.

[aphelyons]

My Creative Year in Review 2018

stolen from but also requested by inspired by @drstrangewillseeyounow​

Preface: This will be a bit of a mashup of two things; art and writing. But I’ll be clear. This is also a long post, I’m very sorry. Apparently I don’t shut up.

Total number of creations? (Or a rough guess!)

Art - Finished; 221 (not all published) Art - WIPS; 25 Writing - Published; 4 Writing - WIPS; 9 ?

Was there a project that you didn’t get around to?

In terms of starting or finishing? Lol. I didn’t get around to publishing the first chapter of the MU fic, which I desperately still want to before S2 starts. Because I keep writing all the middle bits instead. Nor did I get around to start writing the “winter fic” beyond plot points and a few little scenes.

There’s a looooooooooooooot of art I didn’t get around to either starting properly or finishing. Lol. I have a L’Rell piece I really want to do, as  well as [another] mirror Stamets piece I want to do.

What was the creation you had the most fun making?

Art: Oh that’s hard. A lot of things for a lot of different reasons. I enjoyed the Holiday artworks because they were….really out of my depth and fun. Mostly I loved sending them out on cards to friends.

More recently I had a lot of fun doing the Patroclus and Achilles piece. Loved using golden hues.

Also have a lot of fun with Not Safe for Work-Viewing pieces, but those will never be published here. :D Sorry.

Writing: I had a surprising amount of fun writing the Vampire AU fic [Just a Taste] for Halloween. Which I never expected to write anything vampiric, ever, and also it came together really quickly. Building the world in that short fic was a lot of fun.

Any surprises? (E.g. a character or ship you never thought you’d create for or a project that came out of nowhere?)

Well honestly this whole revival to art and writing came as a surprise, I hadn’t done either in many years. I was also never a Star Trek fan prior to Disco, nor have I ever been a part of a fandom before. This is my first! So that was surprising, also surprising was how massively obsessed I became and how important it became to me. But the best surprise out of all of that is the connections to people I’ve made and the friendships that have come from that. ily. <3 Also not going to lie, pretty surprised that suddenly my art has become mega-fuckin-colourful. Where did this love of neon come from??? Wtf

What was the hardest creation to make?

Writing; MU fic - hands down. I have pages and pages and pages of resources. Not only is it going to be a long story (I endeavour and hope) but also from the amount of which I am pulling from and want to align to canon as as best I can as well. Being a new fan to Trek also... it’s been pretty overwhelming to get these details right. But at the same time, really trying to flesh out a character we never met or saw in the show, and have them interact with the established canon and have that all make sense… That and have the science in it make as much sense as possible, I’ve based a few new things on scientific principles and things that exist and just trying to elevate them to a cosmic scale… and hope I can pull that off too. It’s pretty intimidating. Not going into it, but the way the story weaves and intersects with a few different genres.. I just want to have it make sense in it’s self contained body of work.

Yeah it’s hard. Lol. Biggest thing I’ve ever tried to do. But, I love it, truly. I think about this whole project an inhumane amount of times every day, and I love that. 

It’s also hard because I’d love to be a linear writer, but I am not. At all. I’m constantly writing ahead, well and truly ahead, but then coming back, adding to and editing earlier bits and rewriting and rewriting….rewriting… ugh

The subjects and themes are also a little heavy, and it’s cathartic to write about, sure, but also wanting to do those moments justice and with respect and integrity - because that’s important to me too.

The whole thing is just a lot of fuckin work, lol. But I really love it. Already - and it’s nowhere near done.

Art; Probably the one where Paul is laying down [crying] in the spore chamber. It was my first return to trying to paint semi-realism, and... it didn’t work out. I’m not happy with it anymore, but also proud that I pulled it off. That pose? Hair? HAND? UGH those took me too long to get right. But, overall it certainly taught me a lot to use on future more realism-ish pieces such as the Cosmic/Celestial pics of Hugh and Paul [which I love.]

What inspired you the most this year?

Oh, easy. Discovery. Hugh and Paul, hands down both of those things. But also to the endlessly talented people who I’ve come to know and also enjoy the works of - be it written, art, or otherwise. Creativity inspires creativity. 

What are you most proud of? (A creation, something you learned, etc)

Art: The Cosmic/Celestial pieces. Very proud of those. (So much so I made metal prints of them and they sit on my bookshelf between a salt lamp.) I really love how they came out, and really the original (Cosmic Paul) was kind of an accident, a happy accident if you will.  

Also the piece of Anthony I did for Anthony’s birthday. That was a lot of fun constructing something visually representative of a person.

Any goals/plans/ideas for next year?

Fucking get some headway on my MU fic so I can stop being so annoying by just talking about it, and fucking start publishing it already -  for then it then it would EXIST in the word. LOL. Ugh. That’s the only big plan, that’s all I want to do. Whatever art I will do - I will just find inspiration in the moment to do. No plans, other than the L’Rell piece and a couple other WIPs - maybe.  

Honestly just that and trying to keep improving, both in writing and in drawing. I feel like I’ve improved over this past year, so would love to just continue on that trajectory.

Pick your favourite creations! (Post links and tell us why you love them!)

The Cosmic and Celestial Series I just love how these turned out, especially because it was such a surprise how it turned out originally. But being able portray this cosmic divinity of which I uphold them both to be in my mind was really awesome to pull off. The colours, and dramatic light, this whole thing was so fucking fun. The whole painting with colours as highlights / shadows / dual light source was a huge experiment for me and it taught me a huge amount, so I really love it for many reasons.

The Song of Achilles  I started sketching this while I was listening to the audio book and while I fell in love with these two. Please, again, do go read this book. But the detailing on the spear, the auras and Achilles hair were my favourite bits. Oh and the gold blood. Of course, lol. Loved doing the symbolic imagery 

Anthony Rapp’s Birthday Portrait  Because this man means a whole lot to me, and it was nice really nice for a change of pace to try and depict him and things that are important to him. Also really proud of that shoe, ngl. & And MU Stamets and his Mycelium Sun

Huge experiment in terms of colour and lighting for me, and I love love love how it turned out. Even if it’s a little rough. This one was so much fun, and I also printed this out on metal actually lol. Looks pretty cool.  & First MU Culmets Work Still in my heart, even though it’s a earlier work, because it was the first exploitation of this duo for me, and how they might be together. Also where I came up with the HC for his facial scar, which I always will include in any MU Hugh depiction of mine. But I still really like how their characterisation translates in this one.

Writing

Nomenclature.  

The archaeology AU story I wrote for 30MinuteLoop. Also well, this is the only one that’s safe for viewing that’s published, lol, but I am genuinely really proud of this and seeing it through to completion. 

But also the MU story is a fave, but this is the only published section so far:

MU Snippet (These next couple of questions are directly from @drstrangewillseeyounow​ sorry I’ll be so literal in their structure, lmao)

How you decide on which style to use for individual pieces?

Unless it’s something very specific in mind (like the holiday pieces) I just kind of let it take a life of its own. See what it evolves into. I might have one idea to where I want it to go before I export it to PS, but once in PS it might take a whole new life (prime example if the original Cosmic/Celestial Paul. The original was very flat, and pretty boring lol but really became something else in PS. Actually it was supposed to be originally a visual piece to accompany my Vampire fic - and Vampire Hugh picture. But that changed entirely once I got it into PS.)

(It’s hard to see but there’s a bite mark on the original side.)

I'd also know more about your literal process, as in: what's your hardware set-up, what software do you use?

I have a weird all over the place set up. Lol.

So I do the majority of the work on my iPad, up until a stage where I don’t think I can go any further with it (or need more than 6 layers at my disposal) and then export it to my PC (either work or home) and then work on it further in Photoshop. Of which it then gains infinite amount of layers, lmao. Oh god.

As for the file on the iPad, when I’m working on that I can only have 6 layers. So usually will do sketch/line-work on one (or two, if I have to work a problematic bit but then merge it with the rest) and same with the colour/painting. That’s always on one layer, which I’ve grown to really like working like that. I might do skin on one, then clothes on another, but eventually will merge them.  If it’s a full paint (or even half paint maybe), the colour and line layer will eventually be merged as I erase the lines I no longer need as I go and blend that layer more seamlessly into the painted layer. It just ending up a purely painted file without the original lines. Another layer may be added for more delicate details such as eyelashes and eyebrows, things like that.

Everything I do once exported to Photoshop is just with a mouse, I have a Wacom tablet… But I don’t use it, because I haven’t been bothered calibrating it with my dual monitor setup, and am happy doing most of the work on the iPad anyway as it kinda acts like a Cintiq in that regard. But localised. (Plus I can take it anywhere with me, interstate, overseas, to work, to the park, etc. I love that mobility.) Depending if I need a certain element that’s vector based, I’ll make it in Corel Draw or Illustrator, too. I also have Corel painter....buuuuuuuuut still haven’t used it. That’s a goal for 2019 for sure, lmao. Very occasionally I will physically sketch out the idea (like the holiday pieces) scan, and rework, redraw, line it, or whatever in the iPad then go forth with all of the above processes. 

How long does it usually take you from start to finish?

Art: How long a piece takes really varies lol. Sketches can be between 1 - 4 hours on average, sometimes more. Flat colours will be a couple hours more. Half paints usually 4-8 more hours. Full paints and more realism stuff like the Cosmic/Celestial is total of 18hours+ but those times are just a rough idea, sometimes something just works out a lot quicker. Sometimes longer. 

Writing: FOR FUYCKING EVER. I’m the slowest writer ever.

Do you have art WIPs and what do you think keeps you from finishing them?

I have a lot of art WIPs lol I think just losing drive or inspiration to finish them is what mainly kills them, or me getting frustrated that it isn’t working out like I wanted. Sometimes I just forget they exist.

Probably same goes for writing, too. Lol. Also it could be that I’ll dream up the entire (or mostly) of the story, but then getting it onto the page is hard. I want to work at getting better at that.

Do you do any non-fanart, too?

Sure. Although not often anymore, I’m honestly just inhumanly obsessed with Hugh and Paul.. Even when I start a project that isn’t centric to either or both of them… Often it will kind of morph into them. oops. 

I want to say yes to fic too...but That’s a project I haven’t worked on in fucking years and years, so I doubt that really counts anymore.

//end

Wow I am so sorry that was me just rambling on. Anyway, cool. Hi to anyone who made it this far.   I’ll also parrot the line of: Everyone who created/posted art, fic, gif-sets, vids, cosplay, etc., consider yourself tagged if you’d like to be. I’m curious! (I’m fucking serious, P L E A S E   D O.) 

[hope-mikaelson]

JJ’s how to gif using timeline animation instead of frames

So here it is. This is just the basics, It covers the set up and the steps to do it. I will perhaps do a part 2 in the future that covers how to use text and things like that. But if you’re interested in making gifs with timeline, master this stuff first:

OKAY I’ve gotten lots of asks about doing this so today we’re talking about how to make gifs using timeline animation and screen recording. I know lots of people use frame animation. I used to always make my gifs that way. This is just a way that I found worked better for me and was a lot faster and made gifs come out cleaner (making frame caps got real slow on my computer for some strange reason). ANYWAY so what you need for this, most importantly, is quicktime player. At least for the screen recording process. But if you are making gifs of short videos like youtube or something, you don’t necessarily have to record them with quick time as long as you download them. And then you need a video that’s playing somewhere, be it on a site or on a video player (i’m using VLC player in this tutorial). 

First, I open the video I want to gif in VLC player. For this tutorial, it’s an episode of Shadowhunters in 1080p. I get the video to just a few seconds before the scene I want to gif (keep in mind you can do the whole scene, you’re going to cut it up later). Pause the video. 

Then you right click on quicktime player (I keep it open in my doc to make things easier. I’m not sure of the mechanics of doing this part if you aren’t on a mac but I imagine you just need to have quicktime already open). So I right click and hit “new screen recording”

which will then give me a screen like this:

You’re going to hit that red dot. Don’t worry it doesn’t start recording right away. When you hit the red dot, this comes up:

I prefer to click and drag to select the area of the video to save me from having to trip/crop it later. But you can also just click anywhere to record full screen. 

With the click and drag, I box the entirety of the video and nothing else like this:

Then I hit that “start recording” button in the middle. Make sure you click back to your video after you do this and actually hit play. And then just wait and let it record. Once you have everything you want, right click on Quicktime again and select “stop screen recording.”

once you do that you’ll get a screen like this that opens the video you just created over the video you’re playing. 

Now while still in Quick time I go up to the top menu bar and hit “edit” and then “Trim” so i can cut this file down. You want to not open HUGE files in photoshop and also want to avoid saving big files to your computer so being able to take some out is nice. 

When I open it in trim, I just take off the stuff at the beginning where you could see me clicking around and the stuff at the end where you can see me stopping the recording. 

Then I hit trim. And once that’s done I got to “file” and then “save” and save my clip. 

This probably feels like a WHOLE lot of steps. I swear it isn’t. It’ll begin to feel like one fluid thing once you’ve done it a few times. 

Now onto the photoshop part. You’re going to open that entire clip you just made in photoshop. I usually just go find it in my files, and drag it over to photoshop to open it. And you will have a screen that looks like this:

If you don’t have that timeline window there, just go up to “window” and select “timeline”

Now this is the most important step. Do NOT forget it. (Trust me I forget it at least once a day). You need to slow this clip down. Otherwise it’s going to move at a really fast speed in gifs. Usually anything between 40-50% works fine but feel free to adjust it depending on what you want. To slow it down, you’re going to hit that little triange in the top right corner of the video timeline:

This window will pop up right above it. Adjust where it says “100%” to say the percentage you want. For this, I’m going to use 50. Which is usually what I always use. 

When you do that, it is going to actually keep the video length the same, but slow the frames down, which means you’re going to lose half your video. Have no fear it isn’t gone for good. Just zoom out on the timeline using this glider:

Then click on the video right at the end and drag it out to the right:

This should double your clip length and give you all your content back (NOW AT 50% FRAME RATE!)

NOW is the part where you crop/resize your gif. MAKE SURE you do that AFTER you adjust the frame rate. Otherwise, if photoshop converts your content into a smart object (which it WILL ask to do when you resize) you will bypass the option to adjust the frame rate percentage. 

So anyway now we crop based on what we’re going to gif. I’m just going to make a small gif of the three kids hanging out for this gif set. so I’m going to crop for that. But you can use the little slider at the bottom to move through the video if there’s something else you’re looking to crop to fit or whateverrrr. 

That red line there is the thing I”m talking about. See how moving it changed what was on screen? Magic. 

ANYWAY back to the kids:

I crop to what I want first. Then go up to image, resize and resize it to the 268 dimension. 

All I do is make sure the height is something larger than 150 because for this gif I want it to be 268x150. I can crop those extra 20 pixels out after. I hit okay to save it. 

This is where the window pops up that asks if you want to convert it to a smart object. Tell it that’s okay by hitting “convert” and it’ll do its magic thing and convert your wHOLE video clip to a smart object. 

That step always makes it all tiny like this:

Just hold down command and hit the “+” a few times to zoom it back to normal size. 

You don’t really need this step but here’s where I hit image again, and then canvas size to clip the height down to 150px

So now you’ve basically got a gif sized version of an ENTIRE scene. YAY. Or not yay. Idk what you want. Here’s the part where we gif it. FIRST lets add a coloring. You can use your own coloring or a psd or whatever you’re going to do. I’m just going to pop a basic coloring on this and get back to you when I’m done. BUT if you want a coloring tutorial I have one of those here

Okay coloring is added and now we’re back. Have I mentioned that the coolest part of giffing from a timeline instead of frames is that you can put the coloring in place once and it’s on the WHOLE scene? yeah it’s great. The same applies for sharpening. So we’re going to sharpen this mother. I do that by making sure the video is highlighted blue over there in the layers section, then hit “filter” “sharpen” and then “smart sharpen”

These are my smart sharpen settings if you want them:

So now you have an entire scene, colored and sharpened and you’re ready to make it into gifs. 

You do that by adjusting those little gray markers on top of the timeline. I’m going to move those gray things to the area i want to gif to make it easier

then use that same little slider as before to zoom back in so i can most accurately get the area i want:

That little red line is your friend. Use it to slide around and see what your gif is and align those little gray things with it when you have it where you want:

Unfortunately, I don’t have a secret to knowing how long or short it should be. You gotta sort of eyeball it and get used to it. You’ll notice when you go to save the gif, if it’s too big, you gotta go back in and make it shorter. So I’m just taking a guess with this gif length.  But once I have that area selected. I’m going to hit “file” “export” “save for web"

That will save ONLY the area I’ve selected and export it as a gif. 

That opens this window. As you can see, my gif is only 715.7k and only 50 frames. So instead of saving it, I’m actually going to cancel and close this window and go back to the timeline and adjust those gray things to make it longer:

I basically just doubled the length since we know that 715.7k doubled is still nowhere near the tumblr gif size limit of 3GB. 

Then I hit “file” “export” “save for web” again and get this window again:

110 frames is probably way better than 50. Based on the size i can afford to make it even bigger but I’m not going to. Now you have to adjust those settings at the bottom so that it is set to start at the first frame instead of the last frame, and set to loop forever instead of once.

These are my save settings. You’re welcome to use those or whatever your own are:

Then you just hit save and BOOM:

A clean gif with no choppiness and all of the frames in tact. THEN you can go back to your exact same open file and move those gray things around and gif another portion of the scene without changing anything:

“But JJ, now they’re off center because you cropped it to fit the first shot.”

I know. All you have to do is hit the crop tool and then click anywhere on your gif. It’ll give you this:

Now just slide the window to adjust it how you’d like

And then hit enter. Boom. ONE RULE do NOT resize that window. If you start pushing and pulling you’re going to fuck up the gif size and mess up your sharpening. Just slide it around to different locations. Don’t start adjusting the shape/size. If you need to make a bigger gif or smaller gif, reopen your file in a new window and size it that way from the get go or your sharpening will get all whacky. 

Then just save your gif again and:

now you’ve got two gifs from the same scene, same coloring, same sharpening and you can just keep on going, sliding those gray guys around and saving like a saving machine. That’s all kids. Hope this worked and helped you a little. It feels like it has a lot of steps but it’s actually quite smooth once you’re used to it. Let me know if you have questions!

[ambroseseabrook]

Tutorial for GSA Search Engine Ranker

How to Export Content for GSA SER

Table of ContentsGSA Search Engine Ranker Youtube - How to GSA Search Engine Ranker Tutorial - Free information Special GSA SER video tutorials Incredible GSA Search Engine Ranker reviews GSA software verified lists set up guide

No, no. We are really using GSA Captcha Breaker which is replicating AntiGate. If you want to know why we are doing it like this, take a look at our GSA Captcha Breaker Ultimate Tutorial, but simply put, it is more effective that way. Let's look at the buttons on the right-hand side of the table: This will enable you to add a new captcha fixing service.

GSA Search Engine Ranker Youtube - How Too

com 9kw. eu slow AntiGate AntiGate API with IP Finest DeCaptcha Beat Captchas Bolo API Bypass Captcha Captcha 24 Captcha Bot Captcha Infinity obsoleted Captcha Sniper Captcha Trader Captcha Tronix Captcha X CheapCaptcha Death by Captcha DeCaptcher DeCaptcher API with IP Eve specializes in ReCaptcha OCR Expert Decoders HiCaptcha Image Typerz Image Decoders Mega OCR unsteady and sluggish PixoDrom ReversProxies OCR RipCaptcha RuCaptcha ShaniBPO unsteady SpamVilla erases the captcha you have actually chosen from the table.

opposite to. resets the captcha statistics for the picked captcha solving service in the bar. opens the homepage of the picked captcha resolving service. tests the selected captcha (if you are using GSA Captcha Breaker and linking it with GSA Search Engine Ranker by emulating some third-party captcha resolving software application, if the test achieves success, it needs to show something like this: ).

e. utilizing the "Include" -> "GSA Captcha Breaker" mix of actions, often, they might lose connection to each other and GSA SER will stop building links or a minimum of will lose a lot of VpM. So either replicate AntiGate utilizing GSA CB (see how) and link the 2 tools this way, or test the connection regularly to make certain the captchas are being sent to GSA CB.

Latest GSA Search Engine Ranker tutorials

Listed below the buttons you can see the setup of the selected captcha service for each captcha, these fields might vary: some have logins, some secrets, some API keys, and so on. However, there are a few settings which use to all captchas: the variety of times the picked captcha resolving service will try and resolve each captcha (we keep this at 3, but bear in mind that the greater the number, the lower the LpM, but the lower the number, the lower the success rate you will have i.

successful registrations on target sites). this is excellent if you are utilizing some high paid captcha fixing service such as Death by Captcha and you want to utilize it only for the important websites. useful in the exact same method as the above option. again, beneficial in the exact same way as the above alternative.

GSA SER gives you the possibility to manually solve a captcha if all other captcha solving services fail it will open a little window with the captcha image and a basic input. Www.Ntacentre.Co.Uk. However, if you run a lot of tasks, and even just a few, this will get overwhelming and irritating - GSA SER help.

this will flash the window if you have actually ticked the above alternative and a brand-new captcha window appears. Enjoy the lightning show if you have several jobs. At the bottom of the tab we have numerous API key input fields, again for services which fix captchas. I have not used any of these so I actually can't talk about them.

Understand GSA Search Engine Ranker training

The is ticked by default, however we have actually not included this service, so it does not matter anyhow. However, if you have SpamVilla added, this checkbox will force captchas which are simple concerns (not images) to be addressed by SpamVilla's text captcha solver. That's it for the "Captcha" tab. Moving along the waves of this GSA SER tutorial.

As you can see, you have a general checkbox, which if ticked, will send out all validated backlinks to the chosen blog search engines from the list you see below the checkbox. Now, the method this works is, when a task gets a new validated URL, it is simply pinged by all the chosen blog site engines.

Just my humbled viewpoint. Next to the list, as you can see, you can add, edit, erase, import, or reset blog online search engine. Easy as that. The next part of the tab is where you can configure numerous indexing services. Supported ones are: GSA SEO Indexer while it is really low-cost, we do not use it because in my opinion, from reading and understanding what it does, it is unworthy the resources it will use from our VPS.

GSA URL reroute PRO This GSA SEO tool quite simply constructs 301 redirect URLs to your site (this one is not an indexation tool particularly) InstantLinkIndexer Indexification Linklicious. me ExpressIndexer LinkHuggers NuclearLinkIndexer LinkPipeline BacklinksIndexer IncredibleIndexer XIndexer LinkCentaur Lindexed. com OneHourIndexing LinkProcessor Crazy Indexer WitchIndexer FastLinkIndexer LinkIndexr When you pick your indexing service (if you choose to utilize one at all), you can then pick from a few settings listed below the list of supported indexing software applications: will send out just DoFollow links to the indexing services.

Tutorials - GSA Manuals and Docus - GSA SEO

Get Kick-ass GSA Search Engine Ranker Help at - Asia Virtual Solutions

a few of the indexing services above support drip feed, which you can benefit from, and you should. this will open a window where you will have the ability to choose from the engines supported by GSA Online search engine Ranker i. e. WordPress, Joomla, etc (we will list all extremely quickly).

GSA Search Engine Ranker Review & Step By Step Tutorial

And you are all set with the configuration of your GSA SER. Next we move onto the tab: You can utilize this tab to filter out some possibly spammy and hazardous sites which appear on the blacklists you have actually marked from the table. We have disabled this because, I can't keep in mind where I read it (I think it was a post by a SERengines developer), however enabling this.

And besides, we setup each of our tasks with filters configured from its task settings, so no concerns there. And we likewise conserve GSA SER a long time by preventing this blacklist check. If you do pick to use this functionality: the variety of minutes which will need to pass before the chosen blacklists get immediately upgraded include a new blacklist URL edit the selected blacklist URL from the table delete the picked blacklist URL import blacklists from a.

The option merely sets the limitation (in megabytes) which a website's HTML code can be in order for GSA Online Search Engine Ranker to download it and parse it using one of its engines. So, for instance, if you have a target URL which GSA SER is going to download, however it is some guestbook which has tens of thousands of talk about it, making its HTML method too fucking huge (possibly 1.

GSA Search Engine Ranker Tutorial - Manuels and Guidance

And now you understand how to utilize the tab of GSA SER. Proceeding with the ultimate tutorial of this link building monster. Lastly. This is where a great deal of the magic occurs. Read this area completely, because it is of crucial value! The tab: Let's start with the very first 4 rows of this tab i - gsa Ser video tutorials.

the ones with the input fields filled in with courses to directory sites - GSA SER tutorials. This is a screenshot of a few of the files inside the lists folder. Each of the. txt files you see is complete of possible target URLs which you can later use in your jobs to attempt and post a backlink on each of them (we will see how in a minute).

[fathersonholygore]

Ahhhhh. The house smells of cinnamon and cookies, it’s warm, cozy. Hot chocolate, egg nog with an extra drop of something in it. Perfect time to settle in with some movies. Especially some scary ones, or at the very least something weird and wild. Santa-themed horror movies are a sub-genre unto their own. Usually it’s the typical slashers you’d expect. Then there are some truly great surprises, such as the disturbing psychothriller Christmas Evil, one of the greatest slashers ever made Black Christmas. And then there are other Christmas horror flicks, like the classic Gremlins. This year, I tried picking out a few holiday gems I haven’t included on lists for the previous years. Some of them aren’t so much gems as they are very rough yet enjoyable little trinkets picked out of the trough. Moreover, this isn’t a list that’s strict. I’m bending the rules; in certain cases, big time. Bear with me. We all celebrate the holidays in our own way. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few horrors worth throwing on during the season, on a dark, snowy night, in the comfort of your home where nothing bad could ever happen so close to Christmas, right? RIGHT?

Oh, and if you’re mad at something I put on the list, get a grip on yourself – I’m in the holiday spirit, one way or another. Fucking sue me.

1) Tales from the Crypt (1972 film) 1st Segment: “And All Through the House”

Not only does this segment involve Joan Collins playing a housewife who’s had enough of her husband’s shit, murdering him, it also includes a killer Santa Claus in the form of an escaped asylum patient dressed as jolly ole Saint Nick roaming free in her neighbourhood. The murderous Mr. Claus arrives while Joan is trying to cover up what she’s done, so it makes for a real holiday treat. The part about this one that gets me is the Santa, he’s dishevelled and uneasy looking, exactly like an escaped mental patient who killed some Salvation Army bell ringer and stole his beard and outfit. Add that to a frantic Joan Collins trying her best to survive this horrible man, you’ve got some fine horror for Christmastime!

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Tales from the Crypt (TV series) Season 1, Episode 2: “And All Through the House”

This TV adaptation of the segment from the 1972 film isn’t as good, but it’s still damn fun. It’s got another solid lead female performance out of Mary Ellen Trainor, and Larry Drake as another really fucking eerie Santa. This one has a bit more dark humour than the relatively pitch black film segment. I love Trainor’s reactions to being told the police are heading to the neighbourhood to search for the escaped mental patient Santa, there’s just something hilariously disturbing about the whole thing. Plus, we do get a bit more than the 1972 version, simply because this is a full 22 minute episode rather than the segment itself being much shorter. Gives you more bang for the buck, either way.

2) Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Equal parts pseudo-archaeology, horror, and adventure, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale takes the story of Santa Claus into fresh, unexplored territory. On the surface it’s similar to other holidays flicks, where you feel bad for a kid. Here, that kid is Pietari Kontio (Onni Tommila). He’s treated much like a dog. His father Rauno (Jorma Tommila) takes part in the reindeer slaughter. Business has been on the edge for a long while. Things aren’t great. A massive herd of reindeer have turned up dead, taking a worse chunk out of Rauno’s business. At the same time, there’s a British company digging into a mountain, they’ve found something peculiar: wood, and encased within it is tons of ice. Strange, no? That’s because Santa Claus is coming to town. Nothing to be happy about, not like the song says. If you’re looking for something pretty different from most other Killer Santa films, Rare Exports is the ticket. It’s definitely got some stuff to make you chuckle. It’s got even more to creep you the hell out!

3) Sint

Something endlessly hilarious about Christmas and Santa are how deadly serious people can get over it. Forget the Christian stuff (reminder: it’s a pagan holiday, anyway) – especially in the US, conservatives can get wildly sensitive about the portrayal of Santa Claus, a fictitious entity that gives presents to all of the kids across the world who celebrate Christmas. That’s why it’s likewise endlessly enjoyable to see Santa treated as a malevolent, mean spirited entity rather than one bringing yuletide joy. Sint is the tale of Sinterklaas. Now, the legend of Sinterklaas says he’s not entirely evil, though he does have helpers called Zwarte Piet (Black Pete; whole thing traditionally gets a little too close to racism for my tastes, the movie avoids any of that nonsense). The film says shag that, this guy’s a creep. And boy, does he ever get evil, too. Director Dick Maas (De Lift, Amsterdamned) makes the legendary figure into a former bishop who has gone rogue, leading a gang of thieves looting villages. He’s killed one night, and every 23 years after, on that same night when a full moon is in the sky, the old bishop, St. Nicholas returns to kill. Dig in. This one’s fun, it’s weird, and makes no bones about doing its own thing. Fantastic Christmas horror! One of my favourite seasonal horror movies out there.

4) Good Tidings

This isn’t anything special, it’s not going to blow any minds. Good Tidings suffers from poor acting, whereas it excels in atmosphere. Particularly, the murderous Santa(s) here makes for true holiday terror. When three psychopaths lay siege to a homeless shelter celebrating Christmas, a poor war veteran must revert to old, long abandoned ways in order to help him and others survive. This has a lot of problems. Above all, this is creepy, there are lots of spooky scenes and little moments to unsettle you. The score, when it’s good, it is damn good, and a throwback to the 1980s when the killer Santa flick was thriving. Don’t expect too much, then this one will definitely provide a fun night with some friends, a glass of nog, and a bit of Christmas grub.

5) Silent Night, Bloody Night

Several films on the list are only barely connected to Christmas, Silent Night, Bloody Night is no exception. The event which acts as catalyst for the whole plot and story of the film involves Christmas Eve. Other than that it isn’t much related. Still, this is a pretty wild and genuinely good slasher before the sub-genre of horror was officially a thing. This was released in 1972, before Black Christmas, Halloween, any of the other films that defined the slasher going forward. Now I’m not daring to claim this was hugely influential, nor is it anywhere near as good as those aforementioned slasher flicks. Not at all. But, it’s interesting to see that this was doing things these other movies made staples of the sub-genre. Like the score, it’s a classic. And there’s lots of blood, blasphemous killing with the soiling of Christian iconography. In addition you’ve got some odd arthouse-style filmmaking going on, particularly when it gets to flashbacks to the Christmas Eve night in question. A wild ride all around. Definitely worth a shot around Christmas, to put you in that mood. Horrific Highlight: You’ll know what it is when you see it. The broken glass moment is one of fucking nightmares, it’s indescribable. Watch. Be terrorised.

6) Dexter Season 1, Episode 11: “Truth Be Told”

Just like the first Christmas episode of The X-Files, Dexter uses the holidays to dig deeper into its characters, namely the titular one, whose past begins to erupt further in “Truth Be Told” – not only do we gradually discover more bits of Dexter (Michael C. Hall), we discover more of the other characters, from Deb (Jennifer Carpenter) to the Ice Truck Killer himself. There are plenty of things going on here. The meat of the episode is the latest Ice Truck Killer crime scene, fine holiday treats for the forensic team and the cops to deal with, and though the whole episode isn’t Christmas-centric, the lights shine in the backdrop, the crime scene itself is smack dab in the midst of the holiday season. Then, when you get to the last few minutes, the plot gets cooking with gas. Doesn’t have tons of holiday flavour. What it does have is excellent suspense and tension. You can’t ask for more than that.

7) To All a Goodnight

The one and only feature film directed by actor David Hess (Krug from Last House on the Left and Alex in The House on the Edge of the Park) is, as expected, appropriately sleazy considering some of the films he’s done. This is a true Killer Santa premise, one that doesn’t stray at all from a formula that’s become the standard for Christmas horror. A group of young people + some breasts + bunch of blood courtesy of a naughty Santa + isolated environment + redder than red herrings = To All a Goodnight. Nothing special. Yet the cinematography’s surprising, really enjoyable. Then there’s the classic slasher score, which aids in building good suspense for the mostly by-the-numbers stuff; add to that a little eccentric music, it gives the score something extra. A lot of this is generic. It’s still fun, creepy at times, and just a proper flick to toss on with some friends at Christmas, if for nothing else but to have a laugh.

8) Prometheus

Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (just like Alien: Covenant) gets shit on a lot. Father Gore loves both these films. Because they’re fun, they’re vast stories with far reaching themes, and we get more of the birth of the xenomorph, the world Scott began building in ’79 with the masterpiece, Alien. For all the shit it gets, Prometheus is a fantastic sci-fi film. And, I’m going to go out on a limb suggesting the Christmas connection isn’t one that’s added for nothing. It’s not merely fodder for a fun Idris Elba moment. We’re dealing with thematic content here concerning the existence of a God, as humans have known it. Follow me here. If Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) prove that God doesn’t exist, at least not in the form Christianity imagined, then there’s no birth of Christ, all that. Therefore, no Christmas. So, for me, the holiday specific scene in Prometheus is an especially tragic one, like we’re watching this Christmas go on in the shadow of much bigger things, perhaps the last Christmas as they know it.

9) The Children

Technically, this is cheating: The Children takes place just before the New Year. However, it’s a snowy, holiday-themed horror, it’s got the vibes of a Christmas horror flick. I vote it goes on the list. And, well, there’s nobody to stop me, right? And lord, is this ever a brutal, effective, mean little film. At only 80 minutes, director Tom Shankland’s The Children pulls not a single punch. It’s well acted, particularly in the case of Hannah Tointon who plays Casey, the sole teenager in the story. It’s a nasty horror, crossing the borders of decency in all the right ways, asking violent questions about the differences between adults and children in a primitive sense, as well as just a plain tense movie. Special Mention: The editing and sound design during the dinner scene will have you stressed out, ready to snap yourself. But the kids, they snap first. Boy, do they ever snap. This is the worst – in an appropriate way for the plot – dinner scene in cinema history, or at least in the top three. Makes me physically tense. Love it; but I’m a masochist.

10) All Through the House

This one isn’t one you’ll write home about – do not anticipate any impressive acting, above all else. If you can check expectations at the door, All Through the House plays out as a significant, relatively fresh twist on the Killer Santa sub-genre of horror movies. There are only so many different ways a guy ends up in a Santa suit, murdering people. This flick sort of flips the script, as far as it can, anyway. The reveal won’t blow your socks off. Nevertheless, it will disturb the hell out of you. That’ll also explain, later in the film, why early on so many penises are cut off; not that misandry isn’t my thing, because it kind of is, y’know. (sorry, not sorry.) Highlight: Santa humping the air with a pair of garden shears. It’ll be more horrifying when you actually figure out who the character is in the reveal later on.

11) Krampus

What I anticipated as being a cheesy Christmas movie with a few scares turned out to be a few good scares with a deliciously twisted Christmas movie wrapped around it. Krampus is, essentially, set around what happens when a family made up of staunch Republicans and Democrats have to come together for the holidays, co-existing in one relatively small space for a matter of days on end. So, when one boy starts taking the season for granted, wishing his family weren’t a bunch of shitheads, the folklore figure Krampus lays siege to his neighbourhood, his home, and decides to take the kid a lesson. Not only is there some enjoyable holiday horror, this flick is funny. The cast is phenomenal – Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, and Allison Tolman play the couples, all in-laws with their kids. And the young actors are pretty great, too. It’s Krampus and his legion of mischievous creatures that seal the deal. From toys coming to evil life to gingerbread men attacks and more, the horror is as fun as the comedy. What do I love most about Krampus? It’s not necessarily the typical Christmas movie, in that it may not end up where you expect. In a lot of ways, this story stays true to the Krampus legends. That means be good, boys and girls. Else you’ll get a visit, and it won’t be from no Santa Claus, either.

12) The X-Files Double Feature Season 5, Episode 6: “Christmas Carol”

Not only is this a Christmas episode of The X-Files, one of my most beloved shows on television, ever, this is also an episode that plays into the overall series mythology, as well as a strong, emotional, personal dive into the history of Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), whose infertility plays a large part in the story. When Scully goes home for the holidays, she soon starts getting strange phone calls. She winds up in the midst of an investigation, which soon proves to reveal things about her own past, things that, on the surface, look too impossible to be true. Even though the Christmas connection here isn’t huge, it provided Vince Gilligan & Co. a reason to have Scully reunite with family, setting off all the personal issues and emotions she faces throughout the episode. There’s a second part conclusion, “Emily” – that one doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas. But “Christmas Carol” is absolutely an interesting part of the series, not just a one-off holiday episode, rather a big piece in Scully’s puzzle. But let’s move on to the other Christmas episode of the series, one that also includes Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny)!

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Season 6, Episode 6: “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas”

Mulder’s “a left cheek sneak” fart reference gets this Christmas episode rolling with tongue planted firmly in cheek. All the better compared with Scully and her unimpressed attitude about being called out by her partner to an old house on Christmas Eve to deal with “ingrained cliches from a thousand different horror films” Mulder is, as usual, interested in. When Agent Mulder calls Agent Scully out to a creepy house they’ll be staking out, both the agents get more than they bargained for after they get inside and the house is much more than it seems. A dash of haunted house, a little Christmas spirit, some laughs, some scares and an intense showdown in the friendship between Agents Scully and Mulder. A fun, eerie, suspenseful chapter of The X-Files, pitting that usual sceptical, empirical mind of Scully against the ever theoretical, hopeful belief of Mulder, as the two FBI agents search through the old place. They even run into Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin who play the couple living in the house. Lots of good stuff. Good, weird fun for the holidays!

13) The Twilight Zone Double Feature Season 2, Episode 11: “Night of the Meek”

Art Carney is a treasure. The Twilight Zone‘s “Night of the Meek” is only one of the reasons why. This is the tale of a department store Santa who’s fallen into the bottle a bit hard. But he knows it. And he knows too much, about the world, about pain, of struggle, all those things. What starts out as a depressing tale of a rundown man becomes something else entirely. Not the typical Rod Serling-style fare that you’d expect. Definitely magical, fantastical, and like many great Twilight Zone episodes, there’s a message behind the story, about the nature of giving versus receiving during the holidays.

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Season 3, Episode 14: “Five Characters in Search of an Exit”

  There’s not much to say about this one, because saying too much runs the fun. Maybe don’t even pay much attention to the pictures, either. Anyway, “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” is not simply a Christmas-adjacent episode of The Twilight Zone, it’s one of the top ten greatest episodes of television that exists. Some people will tell you that’s not true, that it’s an overrated episode which gets more credit than it deserves. Fuck those people. This episode is tight, it is tense, and the reveal is worth a thousand twists in other films and television. You won’t realise it’s a Christmas episode until you get to those final moments. When all is revealed, then you’ll understand.

14) Terry Gilliam’s Brazil

Another cheat. Not a Christmas movie. However, it does feature Christmas, to a degree. It’s set during Christmastime, one of the initial scenes involves a family enjoying the holiday together in their quaint apartment before the ever present bureaucracy in their dystopian society comes crashing through the living room, into their lives. Brazil‘s all about bureaucracy. Terry Gilliam uses Christmas to exemplify the materialism of this society where he sees us headed. We’re caught up in his weird world, where every dumb custom, every rule, every last little thing is enforced, and everything costs money, and shopping is like one of the deepest circles in Dante Alighieri’s Hell. In short, Gilliam’s Brazil presents Christmas in its purest, most rotten economic form. Much as I love the holidays, he’s not wrong.

15) American Horror Story Season 2, Episode 8: “Unholy Night”

  I love American Horror Story. Fuck the haters. Season 2: Asylum has a special place in my chilly little heart because of the themes and the location, just an all around terror. The eighth episode the season, “Unholy Night”, is a particularly creepy chapter of Asylum. There’s lots of naughty stuff going on at Briarcliff, between the devil using Sister Mary Eunice (Lily Rabe) as his Earthly plaything, a stark raving mad Ian McShane playing a man traumatised by the holiday season, and much more. It’s McShane who makes this episode so memorable. He does appear in a second episode afterwards, but it’s this one where he leaves his best, darkest mark. At the start of the episode his criminal Santa’s laying out what he’ll do to a couple he has tied up, and his remark to the husband – as well as the look on his face while saying the line – is chilling beyond chilling. Even if you don’t like the series, this episode is worth watching if you want some Christmas horror. And there’s some horror, as is usual for AHS. Try not to laugh when McShane bawls: “Well I don‘t wanna be in your shitty picture, then.” Just be prepared for lots of horrific, unsettling holiday horror around the handful of laughs.

16) Syfy’s Happy!

Happy! stars Chris Meloni as a washed up hitman who starts seeing a little kidnapped girl’s imaginary friend, a blue, flying unicorn (voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt) after the girl is taken by a psycho, meth smoking Santa Claus. Not sure if there’ll be a Season 2, but Season 1 takes place during the holiday season, obviously, as a really bad Santa is the focus of the crime plot. Surrounding that is a ton of mayhem, laughs a-plenty, two excellent performances from Meloni and Oswalt, and on top of that? It’s violent as hell, just as twisted. The visuals are exactly like a comic book, seeing as how the story comes from a Grant Morrison work. Check this out, because Season 1’s been perfectly messed up TV for the holiday season! It isn’t horror, so to speak, yet it has the right amount of madness to be proudly on this list.

Father Gore’s Films & TV to Ruin Christmas Ahhhhh. The house smells of cinnamon and cookies, it's warm, cozy. Hot chocolate, egg nog with an extra drop of something in it.

[iluvtv]

Political Power Outage

We all know there is plenty to be outraged about these days. But I think it’s high time to make a vote for joy!

Maybe it’s feeling decidedly grown up while possessing very, very little responsibility. Maybe its the shit-storm that is the world and my very tiny confidence that there is much hope to cling to (I’ll try for a moment to muffle my cynicism here and at least make a rah of enthusiasm for the assumed effectiveness of Ms. Pelosi paired with the newly vacated Sessions). Maybe it’s just my nature. No matter what induces it I increasingly seem to give about zero fucks beyond my commitment to having and spreading this emotion.

JOY.

And when my own humor fails there’s more good TV than I know what to do with. If the apocalypse is near I hope the last thing that crashes at my house is the cable line and streaming services. This way I can at least sneak some uninterrupted guilt-free time to beat my way through at least like 20% of what’s  left on “the list.”

It’s not all jaw droopingly perfect (admittedly some of my most frequent followings are viewed through a somewhat evil eye whilst reading the news) but there’s just enough bullshit on all of our periphery to make even the most basic satire hard to truly fuck up.

Case in point: Modern Family (am I seriously not only still watching but still publicly talking about this show?! — If you don’t watch don’t start and I’ll be brief here, but….). This sitcom which was cutting edge when it premiered is now mainly sleepy and rather cliche. There’s a moment early in this season where Hailey actually says to a large black woman “thanks girl, your hair’s on point!” to which I was so baffled by I took to #blacktwitter in hopes of some dialogue on this exchange  only to realize black people don’t seem to bother with Modern Family #smarterthantheJews? (like how I managed to marginalize and generalize two “kinky-haired” minorities right there? Clearly I’m learning from the fine folks running our country these days...)

But my vote’s for joy so let’s address more positive matters; despite all odds Modern Family has still managed to take on White Boy Privilege with a delightful bit of charm (and underlying vitriol)…

The week of October 5th (noteworthy in as much as it aired during the Kavenaugh hearings) Modern Family ran it’s second episode of its 10 year  (and I assume finale) run with a certain je ne sais quois… not entirely shocking but certainly on par with my zero fucks ‘tude . When Jay wonders why Phil is being so rude to him Luke looks at his grandfather and earnestly retorts “I dunno, but its not easy being a white man these days. You feel me?” And yes, I do believe this line was written in at the very last minute as the Trump Boys raged against the machine (aka crazy women making it “so dangerous to be men these days”).

Similarly, when Alex wonders if she should continue her lifetime pursuit of a science fellowship or change career paths and become a singer she considers the money she’d be giving up.

Alex: “I could make half a million my first year out of school.”

To which her Grandfather wisely replies: “Wow, what are they paying male scientists these days?!”

In other “sitcoms that once broke the mold and now barely blip the controversy radar” news, Will and Grace took on the once taboo topic of sexual harassment with an avant garde “grace” I had yet to witness from network comedy. Last week Grace confronted her father for not knowing just how skeezy his bestfriend had been to her when she was in High School and even more to the point assuming that she had been the one at fault when the summer job she’d had for this man had gone sour. Unfortunately, the “inappropriate old man” experience is all too universally relatable and the layered approach to Grace’s trauma some 30 years later combined with her father’s eventual apology was a fabulously welcome and important commentary. But if all that’s too heavy for your bliss Karen’s lip synching to the Wicked Witch of the West Monologue will 100% make this episode worth it. 

Moving past the predictable sitcoms that are either ready to be retired or are newly resurrected is TV making me far happier. Since we can’t all get work visas and escape to Canada I guess you’ll have to settle on your couch for a few Canadian exports. First and foremost, Letterkenny, a special little satire I’d been planning on getting to for months. This show along with the Netflix debut of season 4 of Schitt’s Creek are so special they deserve a HAIL CANADA blog all their own so we’ll save them for a rainy day. Suffice to say they make me very, very happy. And if you too need joy run to them with open arms.

Speaking of shows worthy of quoting literally every line their genius writing staff composes (and fabulous actors deliver) while also being completely unafraid to address pretty much every single ‘Merica terror -- I finally got around to the first half of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s season 3. As per usual Tina Fey produces popular culture and political commentary entirely on the nose while still being rib achingly funny. I mostly appreciate that this show is entirely willing to offend everyone. As a human largely offended by politics as a whole I find this a hugely relatable and fantastic tactic.

Like in the season premier when sweet little innocent Kimmy, victim of years of captivity gets a sexual harassment suit filed on her (been there girl!)

Titus explains to Kimmy there is a reckoning going on even though she’s not “a Weinstein or the president” she still needs to watch her step.

“It’s not about you it’s about your coworkers.”

Advice we all need.

Or, when lily white, baby boomer, radical Lilian sits on her Brooklyn stoop  drinking malt liquor, holding her late husband’s ashes and lamenting to a young ethnic kid about gentrification her brown neighbor pushes back. The shift is lucrative for him: “I’ve gone from selling rock to powder.”

This is humor offensive on a bipartisan level, right?

The cleverness hardly stops at episode one though so don’t wait until the world is ending and all the power goes out (no please no!!!) sit down and get compfy, this may be the best season yet!

Just a quick PSA, do be wary of getting sucked into Netflix’s next recommendation. Algorithms aren’t nearly as wonderful as my suggestions. Just take Titus’ word for it...

“You know how Al Gore invented internet? He also invented a rhythm for it. It’s named for him and it learns about you and picks things you like.”

I die.

And to go completely off brand here I’d be especially remiss if I failed to mention one of my greatest TV joys these days: Meghan McCain’s return to The View! As a rather unlikely fan I suppose I’m just compassionate enough to appreciate the lengthy time the network allotted McCain to take to grieve “The Maverick” but good golly am I overjoyed to have the betch back at the table. Truthfully, I’m pretty enamored with the whole cast and their lively dynamic (how refreshing to listen to smart women respectfully discussing real issues — the empathy they bring to the current rhetoric is sorely hard to come by)! All cast considered, there is something marvelous about this girl who was raised so differently than me, with such different political ideals and yet I still just feel so connected to. She is an incredibly intelligent, well read, self-actualized bad girl. She speaks her opinions with conviction and poise and even though I mostly disagree with the sentiment I so aspire to argue with that kind of eloquence and confidence. I look forward to sipping a thimble of gin with her as I cook  dinner each night. Here’s to you (and your Pops) Ms.McCain! God knows the more divisive the country gets the more I rely on these women!

And if all that wasn’t enough my new satire god R. Eric Thomas (if you aren’t subscribing to his weekly email you fail at life) actually tweeted that my new Schitt’s Creek election t-shirt was “perfect”.

I guess we all can see satire was the real winner this (and every) week!

[ambroseseabrook]

How to use GSA Search Engine Ranker correctely

Table of ContentsGSA search engine ranker license key GSA Search Engine Ranker Review - Best link Building Tool Help GSA Search Engine Ranker - video tutorials GSA Search Engine Ranker Tutorial - Asia Virtual Solutions GSA Search Engine Ranker Review & Step By Step Tutorial

No, no. We are in fact utilizing GSA Captcha Breaker which is emulating AntiGate. If you want to understand why we are doing it like this, have a look at our GSA Captcha Breaker Ultimate Tutorial, but in other words, it is more efficient that way. Let's take a look at the buttons on the right-hand side of the table: This will allow you to add a new captcha fixing service.

Succeed With GSA SER reviews

com 9kw. eu slow AntiGate AntiGate API with IP Finest DeCaptcha Beat Captchas Bolo API Bypass Captcha Captcha 24 Captcha Bot Captcha Infinity obsoleted Captcha Sniper Captcha Trader Captcha Tronix Captcha X CheapCaptcha Death by Captcha DeCaptcher DeCaptcher API with IP Eve specializes in ReCaptcha OCR Professional Decoders HiCaptcha Image Typerz Image Decoders Mega OCR unstable and slow PixoDrom ReversProxies OCR RipCaptcha RuCaptcha ShaniBPO unsteady SpamVilla erases the captcha you have actually picked from the table.

opposite to. resets the captcha statistics for the selected captcha fixing service in the bar. opens the homepage of the picked captcha fixing service. tests the picked captcha (if you are using GSA Captcha Breaker and connecting it with GSA Search Engine Ranker by emulating some third-party captcha resolving software application, if the test is successful, it ought to reveal something like this: ).

e. using the "Include" -> "GSA Captcha Breaker" combination of actions, sometimes, they might lose connection to each other and GSA SER will stop constructing links or a minimum of will lose a great deal of VpM. So either imitate AntiGate using GSA CB (see how) and link the 2 tools in this manner, or test the connection routinely to make certain the captchas are being sent to GSA CB.

How to Use GSA Search Engine Ranker Tutorial

Listed below the buttons you can see the setup of the picked captcha service for each captcha, these fields may vary: some have logins, some secrets, some API secrets, etc. Nevertheless, there are a couple of settings which use to all captchas: the number of times the picked captcha fixing service will try and resolve each captcha (we keep this at 3, but bear in mind that the higher the number, the lower the LpM, but the lower the number, the lower the success rate you will have i.

successful registrations on target websites). this is good if you are utilizing some high paid captcha fixing service such as Death by Captcha and you wish to utilize it just for the crucial sites. helpful in the very same method as the above choice. again, beneficial in the exact same method as the above alternative.

GSA SER offers you the possibility to by hand fix a captcha if all other captcha resolving services fail it will open a small window with the captcha image and a basic input. GSA Search Engine Ranker training. However, if you run a lot of tasks, or even just a couple of, this will get frustrating and frustrating - GSA Search Engine Ranker training.

this will flash the window if you have ticked the above alternative and a new captcha window turns up. Delight in the lightning show if you have numerous jobs. At the bottom of the tab we have several API secret input fields, once again for services which resolve captchas. I have not utilized any of these so I truly can't talk about them.

GSA Search Engine Ranker Review & Step By Step Tutorial

The is ticked by default, but we have actually not included this service, so it does not matter anyhow. However, if you have SpamVilla added, this checkbox will force captchas which are simple concerns (not images) to be answered by SpamVilla's text captcha solver. That's it for the "Captcha" tab. Moving along the waves of this GSA SER tutorial.

As you can see, you have a basic checkbox, which if ticked, will send out all validated backlinks to the selected blog site search engines from the list you see listed below the checkbox. Now, the method this works is, when a task gets a new confirmed URL, it is just pinged by all the picked blog engines.

Just my humbled opinion. Beside the list, as you can see, you can add, modify, erase, import, or reset blog site search engines. Simple as that. The next part of the tab is where you can set up numerous indexing services. Supported ones are: GSA SEO Indexer while it is really cheap, we do not utilize it because in my viewpoint, from reading and understanding what it does, it is not worth the resources it will utilize from our VPS.

GSA URL redirect PRO This GSA SEO tool quite merely builds 301 redirect URLs to your website (this one is not an indexation tool particularly) InstantLinkIndexer Indexification Linklicious. me ExpressIndexer LinkHuggers NuclearLinkIndexer LinkPipeline BacklinksIndexer IncredibleIndexer XIndexer LinkCentaur Lindexed. com OneHourIndexing LinkProcessor Crazy Indexer WitchIndexer FastLinkIndexer LinkIndexr When you pick your indexing service (if you choose to use one at all), you can then choose from a couple of settings listed below the list of supported indexing softwares: will send out just DoFollow links to the indexing services.

How to Export Content for GSA SER

Get Kick-ass GSA Search Engine Ranker Help at - Asia Virtual Solutions

some of the indexing services above assistance drip feed, which you can make the most of, and you should. this will open a window where you will have the ability to pick from the engines supported by GSA Online search engine Ranker i. e. WordPress, Joomla, etc (we will note all soon).

GSA software verified lists set up guide

And you are prepared with the setup of your GSA SER. Next we move onto the tab: You can use this tab to filter out some potentially spammy and dangerous sites which appear on the blacklists you have marked from the table. We have actually disabled this because, I can't keep in mind where I read it (I believe it was a post by a SERengines developer), however enabling this.

And besides, we setup each of our projects with filters set up from its task settings, so no worries there. And we likewise save GSA SER some time by avoiding this blacklist check. If you do choose to use this performance: the number of minutes which will need to pass prior to the chosen blacklists get instantly updated add a new blacklist URL modify the picked blacklist URL from the table erase the chosen blacklist URL import blacklists from a.

The alternative merely sets the limit (in megabytes) which a site's HTML code can be in order for GSA Online Search Engine Ranker to download it and parse it utilizing among its engines. So, for instance, if you have a target URL which GSA SER is going to download, however it is some guestbook which has 10s of thousands of discuss it, making its HTML way too fucking huge (possibly 1.

COMPLETE GSA SER Tutorial by Asia Virtual Solutions

And now you know how to use the tab of GSA SER. Moving on with the supreme tutorial of this link building beast. Finally. This is where a great deal of the magic happens. Read this area thoroughly, because it is of essential value! The tab: Let's begin with the first 4 rows of this tab i - GSA SER Tutorials.

the ones with the input fields filled out with courses to directories - GSA Search Engine Ranker tutorial. This is a screenshot of a few of the files inside the lists folder. Each of the. txt files you see is complete of possible target URLs which you can later use in your tasks to try and publish a backlink on each of them (we will see how in a moment).