#here it is - the gifset(s) i made just for me | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mithrandirl · 5 months ago

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i always get questions when i do a split gifset, and it's a deceptively simple process so i thought i'd try to show how i do it! i don't know if these types of gifsets have a more universally recognized name, but that's what i call them so that's what i'm going with.

i'm going to write this assuming you have a solid familiarity with photoshop and making gifs, but please feel free to send me an ask if anything is unclear. i use video timeline/smart objects so will be showing that (here's a great general tutorial on giffing with timeline). i will also be talking A LOT about gif dimensions, so first let's briefly go over the limits and theory a little bit.

a 1 column gifset can accommodate gifs 540 pixels wide

2 columns = 268 pixels each with a 4 pixel gutter between

3 columns = 177, 178, 177 pixels with 4 pixel gutters

i'm mostly going to talk about 2 column split gifs here (what i will refer to as 2x1 from now on - 2 across and 1 high), but the process is the same for 3 column (3x1) and so on (1x2, 2x2, etc).

so, why would you even want to make a gifset like this? i mean, let’s face it, generally, bigger is better for gifs on tumblr, and there are obvious incentives to 540 width gifs over 268 or 177/8 width, especially since the upload limit went to 10MB. but even 10MB isn’t much when you’re talking about high quality footage. gif making is a constant balance between quality (whatever that means to you: frame dimensions, sharpening, coloring, etc) and file size. split gifs are a cheat to that limitation >:)

i personally believe an untapped frontier of tumblr gifmaking is playing with dimensions and time. that sentence makes me sound like an old-timey sci-fi villain, but you get the idea: gifmaking is an art and there are many fun and interesting ways of exploring the medium. you can do a lot with 268 pixels! longer frame loops to gif longer scenes unbroken, bolder coloring on a wide shot you don’t want to pare down. and, a shorter x axis means the y axis’s bang goes a lot further on a buck. also just if you have a 2 column set but only 5 gifs so you need to make one take up 2 slots. there's a lot of reasons but the most important one is it's fun :) here are some examples of other split gifs i've made: x, x, x

this isn't so much a limitation, more of a shift in how you think about gifs, but it's important to remember that each gif should ideally be doing something still. when making split gifs, it’s easy to pick a wide scene without thinking about how it’ll be split down the middle, and then you’re left with a lot of something on one side and a lot of incongruous nothing on the other - or you're left with a person cut in half awkwardly in the middle. so while a split gif can still be a whole scene, you shouldn’t ignore the break and what it means to the bigger picture. now this is personal preference, but i like to play with the break and make it a part of the gifset. mirrored movement, subjects trapped on either side but still talking to each other, a bird flying from one side to the other. fun with frames! it can be another way of drawing attention to specific images/moments/feelings happening within the same shot.

SIMPLE SPLIT GIFS

to more narrowly define what i’m calling “simple split gifs,” it’s one set of frames split down the middle into two separate gifs that are meant to play concurrently, side by side.

first thing's first, crop your gif and uncheck delete cropped pixels if it is not already (very important). i'm cropping it to the 1x1 size, in this case 268x350. if you need to see how the full size will look, you can try it out with 536 first. but this one is pretty easy, this is the exact center of the frame (the left boundary of this crop is the center line) and both their heads fit within their respective 1x1 crop.

then color as you normally would. if your scene is very different one side to the other, it might be easier for you to color on a wider crop and then either crop again or copy paste your coloring to the smaller crop version. i do that with the 2x6s, but it's usually not that big a deal to color the 2x1s with just the small crop on your canvas at the time. this scene is very symmetrical, both in movement and colors, so i'm good.

now the fun part! once you've got one side how you want it, save/export as you normally would. at this point i also like to make a mental note of how many frames there are.

so i have 49 frames and it's still only ~3MB! this is just an example that i picked from my rotk fancy set, otherwise i probably would have made this gif longer.

then onto the other side, so i ctrl + z my way back to my smart object video timeline. to get to theoden i just drag and drop the smart object 268 pixels over. since this one is in the exact center of the image, it even helpfully guides me (this can get annoying if you are NOT giffing the center of the image fyi, but you can always manually go pixel by pixel too if you need to with your <- -> keyboard buttons. just always remember where you started and count accurately). i can never move around my smart object without hiding the adjustment layers on top of it, so you'll see me do that in this screen recording.

see how it corrected me when i dragged it a few pixels down by accident, and with all those pink guidelines? sometimes photoshop is good 😌

then make sure you still like the coloring, adjust whatever needs to be adjusted, but watch out! don't make any major changes because it still has to match the other side. and export again.

what we perceive as 1 series of frames chopped down the middle is just 2 separate gifs with the same frame rate. when tumblr loads the images, it will run concurrently in the post (even though it never does in the draft post 🙄). and that's it!

COMPLEX SPLIT GIFS

again i'm making up terms, but i call anything with more than 2 components a complex split gifset. i've tweaked some things in the process as i went along, but this is generally how i did the lotr series. these sets are basically just many split gifs with transitions. and here's where endurance becomes a factor :) there's a lot of prep done blind. but if set up well, it will be fairly easy to pull together by the end.

first i decide on my dimensions, using my upper bounds to determine how big i'm going to go. since lotr has very nice large file sizes, i can go pretty big without sacrificing much in quality. i decided on 3 rows of 350 pixel height gifs and it's worked well for me. that means my biggest gif will have a total height of 1050 pixels - fun! you could also do 8 rows, with two 2x2s or just a series of 2x1s that transition to 1x1s. there really is no limit to this except your imagination and source material.

i cap everything i'm going to use before i even open photoshop, then do all of them at once. uncheck delete cropped pixels, then i make my gifs! this is where i spend 90% of the time on this set. every gif should be the size of the smallest 1x1 gif (268x350 for me). i make all 10 into a fully colored, separate psd. (and then i usually go back through all of them a few times to get the colors to match better 😅) for the bigger ones (2x1: 536x350 and 2x6: 536x1050), i just crop them as if they were 1x1 but always thinking about how they will look when big. this gets tricky when i do the big one :) my lazy workaround for that is to basically make it twice: one cropped as it will be and one full size for me to color. then i copy and paste all the coloring layers onto the small one and voila, i know that the coloring in the upper right slice will also look good on the bottom left slice 1050 pixels away because i saw it on the full size version.

coloring is probably the biggest thing i'm thinking about with this kind of set. the whole idea is that these gifs are using the same colors, more or less, throughout each phase. even with the 1x1s, they're still part of a larger color concept, and they should (🤞) work with each other.

in a pinch, i like to eyedrop a color from one gif and add it as an accent to another. one of my 1x1s had a much more muted color palette originally, but i wanted it to have deeper blues and yellows to complement the 1x1 that would go next to it, so i added some gradients on lower opacity over it, color picked from other gifs i already colored.

i keep my coloring and the smart object in separate folders to help me in the final step of combining everything, and then i trim everything down to my lowest common denominator of frames. you might think you need to keep frames pretty minimal if you're doing 3 phases with transitions like this, but there's more room to work with on a small gif, in terms of file size. i usually do 30-50 frames for each phase, with the assumption that i'll be adding a transition on each side of each gif that will eat up some frames (i usually do 4-6 frame fade transitions). for the rotk set my final frame count was 129 and i never went over 8MB on a gif, so there's plenty of space play around with things :)

and then, combine! whatever order you start with, you are stuck with (unless you're getting even more complicated, but we won't go into that lol). for these sets i go small 1x1 -> medium 2x1 -> big 2x6. i like to think of it in phases from this point on. small is the first phase, then medium, then big. then i put in the fade transitions, chopping up the first phase gif so the last one will fade into it, restarting the whole cycle seamlessly. i'm just doing a quick and dirty fade here, but here's a tutorial if you want more explanation on transitions.

at this point i save this psd as its position, "top left" or whatever (usually it's a psb by this point too 🥲), just in case i need to go back to it. then i export this first gif and move on to the rest.

it's the same concept as a simple split gif: drag and drop the smart object to the new position, but now there are multiple phases to keep track of. folder organization has been key for me to keep everything straight. i move through the gifs in a backwards S, starting with the top left. but you could go any direction, just gotta stick with it and remember your counts. in my case, i'm always thinking of 268 pixels over and, for the 2x6, 350 up/down. it's a tedious process, but it goes quick (apart from waiting for photoshop to load each time you export).

i did this series as a color concept aesthetic kind of thing, so my theory was by using the same-ish colors throughout, that would save me in the end when it came time to export. there's only 256 colors max to work with on a gif, and that's usually what gets me over the 10MB limit. but as i said, i have never even gotten close to the size limit on this series. it's pretty hard to reach the limit on 268 pixels, but not impossible. (i did run into that on the emma set i did, and that was hell. but also not an impossible fix in the end.)

and that's it! if you try any of this and have trouble, i'm happy to help if i can but mostly this is a "click around and see what works for you" kind of process. and feel free to tag me on your split gifsets :) i love seeing them <3

#*lotrsplit #*#split gifs #gif tutorial #photoshop tutorial #usergif #allresources #chaoticresources #completeresources #photoshop tag

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uraichievents · 7 months ago

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UraIchi Week 2024

Monday, July 1st, 2024 - Sunday, July 7th, 2024

AO3 Collection

Full Prompts List Submitted This Year

(Click images to enlarge. Alt text under the cut.)

What is UraIchi Week?

It’s a week-long fanworks event to promote the Urahara Kisuke x Kurosaki Ichigo ship. There’s no sign-up, it’s just for fun, and everybody can participate. Completed works and wips are both acceptable, and any type of fanwork (fanfic, fanart, gifsets, etc.) is welcome. NSFW and/or potentially trigger-y content is allowed, although please remember to tag your works properly.

The ship itself can be written romantically or platonically, as lovers or friends or even enemies, so long as it stars these two characters together in some way. Poly ships are also fine so long as Ichigo and Kisuke are still the focus of the fanwork. And crossovers and fusions are also allowed even if it isn’t one of the given prompts for the event. Basically, anything goes, and the only criteria is that it has to be UraIchi-centric.

Posting:

UraIchi Week is hosted here on Tumblr and on AO3. For posts on Tumblr, remember to ping @uraichievents and tag #UraIchi Week 2024. For AO3, you can add your work(s) to the collection linked up above. You are also welcome to join the UraIchi Discord server if you haven’t already and come and talk about what you’re working on!

Themes:

July 1st, Day 1: i've met you before / i'll meet you again / this is the first time we've met.. right?

Time Travel / Dimension Travel

Identity Porn / Hidden Identities

“I've suffered from traumatic dreams of my past lives since I was a child, and I'm just now realizing that coming up to a beautiful stranger who looks like someone I've seen die a thousand times in a thousand different ways at a bar and asking if we've met before sounds a lot like a come-on haha no wait come back that doesn't mean I'm not desperately attracted to you please kiss me again” AU

July 2nd, Day 2: It's fact that killable problems are not real problems.

Murder Husbands

Ichigo is Deadpool / unbreakable / any other accidentally immortal being who is really kind of annoyed about it (because it’s boring, and he’s still young enough to be within his lifespan, but it sure takes the fun out of fighting).

All the times Ichigo died, he ACTUALLY died, he just came back. Every time he comes back, he comes back Wronger.

July 3rd, Day 3: Things I Should've Told You / Things I Don't Tell Anyone Else

The skeletons in your closet are about to overflow. Would you like me to tidy it up?

Ichigo is experimenting with self-expression, a hobby, etc., making up for lost time as a regular teenager. Urahara is always the first one (sometimes only one) to see or hear about a new idea.

“The person I trust most is you.”

July 4th, Day 4: Sword and Shield

I am yours to command, use me as you please.

Shiba!Ichigo and Second Division!Kisuke

Summoner/Mage AU: Paired summons who are good apart but unmatched together.

July 5th, Day 5: That One is Mine

Hollow Instincts / Feral Protective

Possessive!Kisuke: He stepped aside for Sui-Feng because Yoruichi was always master first and friend second and love interest never, and because Yoruichi wanted her in a way she's never wanted him. But Ichigo is different, and everyone soon realizes that when Kisuke truly wants something, he always gets it in the end.

“Death can’t have you. You’re mine.”

July 6th, Day 6: Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some are born, some are made, and some decide being a monster's pretty fucking cool.

Visored!Urahara Kisuke AU / Vasto Lorde!Kurosaki Ichigo AU

“Ichigo forges a friendship with his Hollow in the Shattered Shaft” AU

vs. Gotei 13 AU: Ichigo time travels back from a future where he was chained to the throne as the next Soul King by the Shinigami.

July 7th, Day 7: Creator’s Choice!

As always, the above prompts are all optional, and you’re free to come with your own ideas. You can also find an excel sheet with all the prompts submitted this year linked up above, so feel free to look through that if you want, and you can also make a copy for yourself.

And that’s it! We’re looking forward to what everyone comes up with!

#psa #uraichi #uraichi week 2024 #uraichi week #bleach

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cal-kestis · 2 years ago

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HOW TO: Make a Pantone “Color of the Year” Gif

A few people have asked about my Pantone sets which use the “Color of the Year” swatch design. So, here’s a full tutorial with a downloadable template of my exact overlay! Disclaimer: This tutorial assumes you have a basic understanding of gif-making in Photoshop.

PHASE 1: PICKING A SCENE + PANTONE COLOR(S)

I’m starting with this because it’s crucial for planning your gifset as well as making sure the execution is smooth sailing. The steps in this phase won’t necessarily be literal steps but some tips for how I usually go about making a Pantone set:

1.1 – Picking a scene. Scene selection is everything. To make things easy on yourself, I suggest choosing scenes where the background is mainly ONE color — for example, a scene where the subject has a clear blue sky behind them. To make things even easier, choose a color that isn’t the same color as the subject of your gif. Like, if your subject is a human, I’d avoid using a gif with a red or yellow background unless you want to do a lot more work to mask their skin.

Rip me using a scene of green lil Grogu in green grass lmao. But I guess that goes to show you could really do this with any scene (I just did lots of masking and keyframe animations to perfect this green shade). BUT selecting your scenes wisely = a lot less work.

1.2 – Picking Pantone colors. People often ask me how I choose my colors and there are a few methods which I’ll go over below.

But note that not all Pantone colors have a cute name, or any name (fun fact: only Pantone textiles have official names and they end with TCX, TPX, or TPG).

METHOD A: Google Search “Pantone [Color]” Source: Google Easy but not always fruitful, all you do for this method is open Google and type “Pantone [insert color here].” For example, when searching for teal colors, I searched several things including: Pantone Teal, Pantone Turquoise, Pantone Blue, Pantone Green, Pantone Blue Green, etc. Then, just sift through the Google results and click on whatever comes up from the official Pantone website! Since Pantone’s site blocks some info behind a paywall, you won’t be able to get a hex code from them. But you can just screenshot the swatch from their site, put it in Photoshop, and use the eyedropper tool to figure out the color.

METHOD B: Color-Name Site Source: https://www.color-name.com/ This handy website lets you search by colors using the upper navigation bar. Or you can just type something like "magenta" or "blue pantone" or even “frog” and see what comes up lol. Color-name can put together palettes too! I like that this site also tells you the hex code of a color, which is really helpful for getting the right code to put in my overlay. Note: Not every color on this site is a Pantone textile, so not all of these names are Pantone-official names. You can tell it’s official if, in the Pantone row of the Color Codes table on the middle of the page, it has a code that’s 2 numbers, a dash, 4 numbers, and either TCX, TPX, or TPG.

METHOD C: User-Made Pantone Colors Archive Source: https://margaret2.github.io/pantone-colors/ For my Wednesday characters as Pantone colors set, it was all about matching the color name to the character’s vibe. So, before looking at the actual colors themselves, I wanted to find the perfect color names. I stumbled upon this page. The pros = it lists pretty much all of the current official Pantone names. The cons = it’s not convenient since there’s no filtering tool. You can do Command+F and search for keywords, but that’s it. I literally scrolled through this whole page for my Wednesday set and read every single name, which... I think means... something’s wrong with me /lh /hj

METHOD D: Official Pantone Color Finder Source: https://www.pantone.com/pantone-connect This is last on my list because I don’t actually recommend it. Unless you already have access to this resource from your school or work or something, I would never pay for it and it is a paid feature only. Boooo 👎 But there is a free trial (which I’ve never used), so if you want to see what it’s about, you can definitely go for it.

PHASE 2: MAKING THE BASE GIF

Again, just some super quick tips for making a gif that, I think, looks best with this kind of set — but if you’re still learning how to gif, I do have a basic gif-making tutorial here for extra guidance!

2.1 – Uncheck “Delete Cropped Pixels” before cropping your gif. When you use the crop tool, this checkbox appears in the top toolbar. Unchecking it allows you to move the positioning of your gif later on, which is handy in this case when you want to choose which part of your gif will be underneath the Pantone swatch. You can read more about this tip in my basic gif-making tutorial (linked above; Step 1.5 – Tip B).

2.2 – Make your gif 540px width. My gifs for these sets are usually 540x540px but I think 540x500px will also look good. I think it’s more impactful though to make a big gif to show off your coloring.

PHASE 3: ADDING THE PANTONE OVERLAY

3.1 – Download my template I made this template myself, so all I ask is that you don’t claim it as your own and that you give me proper insp or template credit in your caption if you decide to use it! Get the PSD with the transparent background here!

3.2 – Download the font Helvetica Neue Bold The font I use (and I’m pretty sure it’s the same font Pantone uses) is Helvetica Neue Bold, with some very specific letter spacing (which I determined by studying Pantone’s official Color of the Year Very Peri design). It’s already set in my .psd but here are specs in case: color name spacing = -40, color code spacing = -75 (sometimes I’ll do -25 for the numbers after the dash if I don’t like how tightly they’re packed together).

I uploaded Helvetica Neue Bold to my dropbox here!

3.3 – Import my overlay You can either drag the whole folder onto your gif from tab to tab or right-click the folder, select Duplicate Group, and select your gif as the destination document. Just make sure this overlay group is above your base gif!

3.4 – Fill the color swatch In my .psd, on the layer labeled “Pantone Swatch,” just grab the hex code of your chosen Pantone color and fill that layer using the Paint Bucket tool! I’ve already put a layer mask on the layer for you so it fits perfectly inside the square outline.

If you’re using my .psd, all the blend mode settings are already in place! I usually set the colored square behind the Pantone logo to the Color blend mode, but sometimes, I prefer the way Hue looks. It’s up to you!

You can also adjust the drop shadow settings to make your text more visible as needed. The layers are arranged in this order so the drop shadows don’t interfere with the semi-transparent part of the colored swatch.

3.5 – Insert the color name and code My .psd has two versions to choose from: (1) a color name that fits on one line and (2) a color name that requires two lines. Use the one that applies to your color name and simply type that and color code into the corresponding text layers!

Note 1: Pantone doesn’t keep their font size uniform for every color of the year. They’ll sometimes shrink the text to fit longer names, but I like being consistent. So, I use this one font size for all my colors.

Note 2: My template has all the text left-justified and matching the starting point of the P in Pantone. BUT, sometimes the gif looks better if you nudge the text a bit so it looks more centered. Use your discretion when aligning the text!

Note 3: Btw, you definitely don’t have to use the TCX/TPG codes like me. (I’m a nut and there’s no way I’ll ever do a Pantone set and not use those types of codes to maintain uniformity across this series lol.) I’ve seen others do sets inspired by mine using different color codes or even just the hex code itself!

PHASE 4: COLORING THE BASE GIF

The key here is to make a majority of your gif feature your chosen Pantone swatch. If you’re really smart with your scene selections, this should be a breeze! If you’re stubborn like me and want to use specific scenes with the opposite color of your chosen Pantone swatch, there will be a bit more color manipulation involved... However, this isn’t a coloring tutorial, so again, I’m going to give some tips and resources that will hopefully help you out!

4.1 – Color matching. Now that you have the Pantone swatch on your gif, you should be able to reference that center square set to Color/Hue to match the rest of your gif to that color. Feel free to paint a little blob of your color onto another layer anywhere on your gif so you can refer to it closer over a specific part of your gif. For example, I put a little circle over Grogu’s head to see how closely I matched Pantone’s Peapod color, then I tweaked my adjustment layers a bit more until the colors matched near perfectly and I couldn’t tell where that blob begins or ends. The left is the solid color and the right is set to the blending mode Color (like the square):

4.2 – Moving the base gif. This isn’t really about coloring... but remember when I said to uncheck “Delete Cropped Pixels” in Step 2.1? Well, here’s your chance to adjust your canvas and move the gif around so the exact part you want under the color swatch is in the right position. I personally think these kinds of sets are more impactful when you put a differently colored part of your gif under the swatch so you can see through it and the difference is clearer. In my example, I put Grogu in the center so the green box would cover some of his brown potato sack robe.

4.3 – Color manipulation. Color manipulation is when you transform your media’s original color grading into a completely different color. The Grogu gif isn’t a great example because the original scene was already a green-yellow color:

I mean, the difference is still pretty drastic but that’s mostly because my file was HDR and washed out as a result.

So, here’s an example I made using a gif from my first Pantone set for ITSV (I’m not doing this demo to the Grogu gif because it’d be too much work to manipulate a green background with a green subject. This ITSV scene is perfect bc the majority of it is blue while the subjects are mostly red.)

For the “basic coloring,” I did everything as I normally would: mostly levels and selective color layers.

For color manipulation, my fav adjustment layer is Hue/Saturation (those are the screenshots that are on the gif above). When you’re smart with your scene selection, it’s pretty easy to manipulate colors with one Hue/Sat layer because you usually only need to tamper with 1-2 colors and, hopefully, they shouldn’t interfere with skin tones (obviously you’ll do other layers to further enhance your gif’s brightness, contrast, etc. — but I just mean the heavy lifting usually only takes me one layer with a good scene choice).

All you have to do is figure out what color the majority of your gif is, toggle to that color’s channel, and fiddle with the hue slider. In the gif above, you can see that I played with both the Blue and Cyan channels. Here’s why:

If I only adjust the Blue hue slider, I get those speckles of cyan peaking through in the gif above. Unless you’re working with completely flat colors — like 2D animation with zero shading/highlights — a color is never just one, solid color. Blue isn’t just blue, it may have some cyan. Purple isn’t just purple, I often have to toggle the Blue channel too. So, yeah, be mindful of that!

I’ll sometimes go in with the brush tool and paint over some areas of my gif to really smooth out the color and make it uniform. When I do that, I just set that painted layer to the Color blend mode. Some of the resources below go into that technique a bit more!

4.4 – Coloring resources. While not all of these tutorials cover the same type of color manipulation I did in my gifs, I think the principles are similar and would be helpful to anyone who’s a beginner: – color manipulation tutorial by usergif/me: I go a bit more in depth here (I think lol) – how to change the background of any gif by usergif/fionagallaqher: a great tutorial for using keyframes so you can manipulate the background of a gif with lots of motion – bea’s color isolation gif tutorial by nina-zcnik: this tutorial has more tips about hue/saturation layers as well as masking your subject – elio’s colouring tutorial by djarin: this tutorial shows a lot of examples of first manipulating the colors then brushing over the gif with a matching color for extra coverage

And just one last note on coloring, I always try to appreciate gifs with the mentality that “good” coloring is 100% subjective. One of the only things I would classify as “bad” coloring is when you whitewash or [color]wash someone’s skin tone. So, as long as you keep the integrity of your subjects’ natural skin — especially if they’re a POC — you should feel good about your coloring, because it’s yours and you worked hard! <3

PHASE 4: EXPORT

That’s it!! If you work in Video Timeline like me, just convert from Timeline back to Frames, export your gif, and voila!

Easy PEAsy. 🥁

If you have specific questions about this tutorial, my ask box is open <3

Also, check out these other Pantone-inspired sets by my friends @nobodynocrime (Mulan set) and @wakandasforever (Ponyo set)! There are so many ways to use Pantone colors in your set, so I hope this inspires you to create something beautifully colorful <3

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thlayli-ra · 4 days ago

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Trick or treat is such a fun idea!

Could I request a Punkintyre ficlet with the shock collar prompt 🥺 (I would very much appreciate Drew being the one in the collar but I leave the details in your very capable hands)

Ok so, just, let me explain myself here! By the time this prompt came through I had already received the Cody Rhodes 'Shock Collar' prompt and I didn't want to essentially write the same fic so I tried to come up with something different and I couldn't stop thinking about this gifset from Bad Blood and @fantasticalleigh 's tags on it about Punk and Drew being like two beasts mating in captivity, and it made me think of the original Planet of the Apes movie and well... this is the final result. Hope it's kinda, sorta what you were hoping for (I'm sorry!)??? 😬

Trick - 'Shock Collar'

Characters - CM Punk, Drew McIntyre

Rating - Mature (18+)

Warning Tags - Alien Abduction, Drugging, Breeding, Non-Con, Dub-Con, Rough Sex

'Punk! Wake up! Wake up, ye stupid prick!'

A meaty palm slapped his cheek, stirring him from his deep sleep. 'Ow!' Punk grunted moodily. 'What the fuck's wrong with you?'

It was then that he saw the raw terror in Drew McIntyre's eyes. 'Everything is wrong! Everything is as fucking wrong as it can possibly be!'

His vision started juddering back into focus and Punk spied the metal above Drew's head. For a split second he thought they were both in the Cell, and that he'd taken a bad bump and passed out during their match but he soon realised that these were not the zig-zag mesh of Hell in a Cell.

These were bars!

They were both locked in some kind of cage!

Punk sat up like a shot to look around. The cage was large, more like an enclosure, and rich in foliage, wiry bushes, dirt and rocks. Punk was lying on a bed of hay in the top-most corner, under a bamboo canopy like some kind of animal in a zoo.

'Drew?' he stammered out. 'Where the hell are we?'

'I have no idea...'

The large Scot lumbered up to his feet and tentatively stepped out from under the canopy and into the make-shift forest. Behind him, Punk gawked when he noticed Drew's attire. Or lack of it! 'What are you wearing?'

Drew glanced down at the sparse shred of clothing to his name - a loin-cloth made from animal pelt draped around his waist and a metal collar around his neck. 'Same as you,' he shot back and Punk looked down and found to his horror that Drew was right. Letting out a curse, he shoved the front of his loin cloth down between his legs to give himself some decency then moved his fingers up to inspect the steel collar at his throat. It was bolted fast. The panic escalated into full-on alarm! 'What the fuck is going on?'

'Shh,' Drew hushed him, his ears pricked.

'You hear something?' Punk whispered.

'Shut up!'

Drew edged his way forward, reaching out his long arm to swipe through a clump of giant leaves and push them aside to reveal-

'JESUS CHRIST!' Drew toppled backwards with fright, landing hard on his lower back.

'FUCK!' Punk yelled, shuffling further back into his corner.

Quick as a flash Drew rushed up beside him, the two men shaking with terror. 'You saw that, right?' the Scot asked.

'Yeah,' Punk hushed out, trying to process what he had just seen. 'Yeah I saw it.'

Behind the leaves there had been a gap in the bars, filled with what looked like glass. A viewing gallery to peer into their enclosure. And there standing at the window were two figures crafted from their very nightmares. Impossibly tall and thin, something not of his world or the limits of his understanding, something that was completely...

...alien!

Suddenly a high-pitched shriek tore through Punk's head. He let out a wail as the pain screeched behind his eyes, covering his ears to try and stifle the blare.

'-creatures of P-0087453-E,' a tinny voice spoke inside Punk's very skull. 'We believe they refer to it as Earth-'

'W-what's happening?' Drew gritted out through his clenched teeth, tearing at his hair. He could hear it too!

'I don't know, I- GAH!'

'-simple creatures, not highly advanced. They can be prone to acts of violence and aggression, acting purely on their most basic urges-'

'I can hear a voice!' Punk yelled over the static in his skull. 'I think... I think it's them. Whatever they are!'

'I hear it too. How is that possible?'

'I have no idea! AAAGHHH!' The pain was growing, like somebody was blasting a badly tuned radio in his head.

'-but incredibly rare and valuable. Which is why our experts identified these two as a fertile pair and brought them here for our breeding programme-'

Punk froze. Had he really heard that right? Or did he just imagine it? Glancing up at Drew he was shocked to find the Scot looking deathly pale. He was afraid the larger man was about to keel over any second and shook him roughly by the shoulder to snap him out of his stupor. 'Hey, you ok?'

'This can't be happening! This is all some fucked up dream. This can't be-'

'-we will start our programme by activating the pheromones in the dominant male-'

Punk's stomach fell out from under him, wondering what on Earth that meant! Perhaps there was some kind of mechanism in the cage that would spray it into the enclosure? Anticipating it, he grabbed in a lungful of air and held it, waiting, listening, watching for anything to happen.

But nothing did.

He released his breath with a loud gasp, coughing oxygen back into his bloodstream. 'I think we're in the clear,' he told Drew, 'I didn't see or hear anything and I don't feel any different so-'

Drew let out a heavy grunt beside him, cutting him off and Punk turned to find the Scot shaking his head like he was trying to fend off an incoming sneeze.

'Drew? What's wrong?'

Drew's head shot up, his gaze finding Punk and fixing on him. His pupils were completely blown, erasing all the blue from his eyes. Making him resemble some kind of wild animal in the woods, a bear or wolf or... no, more like a shark circling the water, smelling fresh blood. Strong and dangerous. And hungry!

Guess he'd just found out who the so-called 'dominant male' was, and if that was Drew, then what exactly did that make Punk?

'Pheromones activated. Now all we have to do is wait and we'll hopefully see the mating rituals of this fascinating species.'

Shhhhhit! 'D-Drew?'

But the larger man wasn't listening! Settling onto his haunches like a crouched tiger, he began to stalk closer to his prey who scrabbled backwards with a yelp but where could Punk go? They were completely caged in and inevitably his spine collided with the metal bars of the cage, cutting off his retreat. Drew was on him now, mammoth arms boxing him in on either side and trapping him completely.

'Drew! Snap out of- urk!'

Punk's heart twisted with fear when Drew's bear paw found his chin, grasped it and lifted it up like he had done so many times before. The black, lifeless eyes looked him all over, Drew tilting his head slightly and giving that exact same elated smirk he'd worn back in the Cell at the first sight of Punk's blood. The hand at his chin then went for his throat, wrapping around Punk's collar and pushing him back until the base of his skull clattered against the bars.

Eyes clouded. No thoughts, only instinct.

'Drew! Hey McIntyre, listen to me!' Punk tried to break through the Scot's hysteria, tried to snap him out of this trance. 'You gotta fight it, you hear me? Fight it!'

But it was in vain. Punk's mouth was abruptly gagged by Drew's invading tongue, the larger man growling and snarling, rumbles vibrating down his throat and through their chests pressed together, while large, thick hands stroked all over Punk's shoulders and back and chest and nipples then trailed down his ribs and stomach and pelvis to-

'NO!' Punk wrenched his face to the side, freeing his mouth. His hand grabbed hold of Drew's wrist, stopping it in its tracks. 'GET OFF! STOP IT, DREW! THIS ISN'T YOU!'

And then the blue flickered back into Drew's eyes and for a brief moment, his humanity returned, only to be engulfed once again. 'No, no, no, no,' Drew pushed himself off of Punk, stumbling away. Punk, still packed tight against the bars of the cage, watched as the Scot roared in distress, grabbing fistfuls of his own hair, twisting his head from left-to-right and back again, a man trying to evade a swarm of invisible wasps.

'No,' he growled under his breath. 'No, not like this! Not this way!' Drew blinked the blue back into his eyes, holding onto himself again, however fleetingly. Then turned his attention towards the window of terror hidden away at the far end of the cage. 'No!' he spat at their captors, 'I won't!'

'-hmm, perhaps the first dose wasn't strong enough. Activating a second dosage-'

This time, Punk saw the powder puff up from Drew's metal collar, engulfing his face, and like before he struggled and writhed, trying to evade the poison but it was clinging to him, following him around the enclosure no matter how far he tried to run. His roars filled the air, Punk quaking with fear at its feral nature. Too scared to move, he watched as the huge Scotsman bent down and heaved a huge rock right up out of the ground.

'What the hell is he-?'

Drew rushed towards the observation window, the boulder raised high, meaning to throw it right through the glass and shatter it to smithereens.

'Immediate threat detected. Engaging collar!'

A loud crackle and Drew tossed his head back, screaming in agony. The boulder plunged from his arms and his body soon followed, both hitting the floor with a crash.

Punk leapt up to his feet, his heart in his throat.

'There, that should pacify him-'

But their captors grossly underestimated the fortitude of their prisoner. 'I'm no some beast in a cage,' he croaked, dragged his arms under him to push himself up, 'and you won't reduce me to one!'

'Shock him again!'

Another crackle and Drew fell onto his back, spine rigid and arched painfully off the filthy floor, howling through his gritted teeth, until the shockwave released him and all four limbs flopped, lifelessly. From his position by the bars, Punk held his breath, looking for any sign of life.

It all seemed hopeless. Until Drew rolled his hips back.

Unbelievably, he flipped up onto his feet in a perfect kip-up, just like he would in the ring and before they had a chance to shock him again, he grabbed up the boulder and launched it through the air with all his might.

'WATCH OUT! WATCH OUT!'

Drew went down with another terrible shockwave just as the boulder crashed against the glass, not shattering it but creating a crack that almost split the screen in two. Only this time, the gruelling torture didn't stop. The shocks continued, the Scot's body contorted horribly, flailing rigidly in the dirt. Punk rushed towards him, hearing the electricity running through his fellow wrestler, seeing the turmoil on his face. He looked towards that window of terror, and the creatures hidden behind the fractured spiderweb of broken glass.

'That's enough!' he yelled towards it, hoping that, by some miracle, if he could hear those things that they could hear him too. 'You'll kill him! Stop!'

But still the jolts continued, one after the other. And now Drew wasn't screaming anymore and Punk could see froth foaming at his mouth, his blue eyes rolling into the back of his head.

'I SAID THAT'S ENOUGH!'

Still nothing. Punk's head went blank with panic, desperation.

'WE'LL DO IT! WE'LL DO WHATEVER YOU WANT! JUST TURN OFF THE COLLAR FOR FUCK'S SAKE!'

And finally... the crackling stopped. Followed by dreadful silence, highlighting the heavy breathing of both men and the putrid smell of burning flesh in the air.

'Punk...'

Punk's eyes found Drew's weakly fluttering back at him, pain-filled and weak. Ringed by the tiniest sliver of blue. 'It's ok, Drew, it's alright.'

'No... don't...'

Looking around him, Punk found the perfect spot and shuffled over to a large, flat rock. Slumping down to his knees, he bent over and lay atop the cold surface, lifting his hips up into the air.

Nothing happened. He looked back to find Drew where he left him, refusing to move.

'Come on Drew, it's alright. Just do as they say.' The Scot shook his head stubbornly. 'One little fuck isn't worth killing yourself over. Anyway, isn't this what you've wanted this whole time?'

'Not like this,' Drew choked out with a sob.

'If they kill one of us, they'll kill both of us,' Punk protested. 'The only chance we have of getting out of this is by sticking together.'

But still, Drew refused to move.

Punk sighed with defeat. Turning his face away, he placed his cheek against the cold rock and whispered, 'hit him with the pheromones again.'

From behind him, he could hear Drew call 'what did you just- urgh!' Then he held his breath and waited.

It didn't take long for Drew to crawl over, sniffing like a curious beast at Punk's rear. The tattooed man flinched when his loin cloth was ripped up, exposing his open cheeks and Drew mounted him from behind, his hairy chest and stomach rubbing up against his bare back. Two huge fists wrapped around Punk's skinny wrists and held them down, keeping Punk securely pinned on his front to the rock face as Drew rubbed his sopping wet and rock hard dick between Punk's glutes, prodding his head around until it lined up against his puckered hole.

Then rammed himself in. Punk choked on a cry of pain, a terrible burning at his rectum as he was stretched wide and entered. The beast on his back hooking himself into his body, breaking through the seal and into his guts, tearing him open.

No thoughts, only instinct.

And Punk closed his eyes and tried to fight the growing ache between his own legs and Drew's hands shackling his wrists tightly, and his warm breath grunting against his ear and his sweat falling onto Punk's back and pooling in that small hollow at the base of his spine and his huge dick ravishing him again and again.

But soon the blood and the pre-cum lubricated his passage, and Drew began to move easier and the thrusts became long and powerful and struck that perfect little sweet spot deep inside of him and Punk began to hear the crackles in his own skull and see the explosions of electricity behind his own eyelids and in an instant, he forgot the cage, the window, their plight and he became lost in the throes of the delicious mix of pain and pleasure. Opening his thighs up wider to entice Drew in even further, his lips fell open and he moaned, a line of drool escaping the corner of his mouth and dripping onto the stone beneath him.

Drew began to pump in harder, scrubbing Punk's naked chest against the jagged rock and Punk was so helpless, caught in the larger man's strong grip and he couldn't help but love his helplessness, being held down and bred like a bitch in heat, all while being watched, being observed. A thought bubbled to the surface of his consciousness, wondering if he too had been hit with some kind of pheromone to muddle his senses but it fell away again when Drew hit his bundle of nerves head-on with the blunt tip of his dick. His own cock was full to bursting and it was too much to bear and when he let out a strangled cry, Drew obliged him by letting go of his wrist and grabbing him between the legs, pumping his shaft with a taut grip, the pad of his thumb teasing his slit.

'Fascinating! We always wondered how two males of this species mated and now we know it's through the-'

Punk went blind and deaf and even the blaring static in his head was drowned out as warm cum seeped into him and out of him, sopping from his wrecked hole and between his swollen cheeks and down his ragged thighs onto the dirt below. Drew collapsed onto him, nuzzling his face into the hollow between Punk's shoulder blades and kissed his flushed skin tenderly. 'S'you ok?' was all Punk's numb lips could form. Drew answered with a throaty purr.

Later, the pair were up on the hay under the canopy, Punk firmly snuggled in Drew's arms, both of them fast asleep. But something stirred the tattooed man slightly from his slumber, a tinny voice echoing around his skull.

'-a success. But this is only phase one of our breeding programme. Tomorrow we'll prep the submissive male for surgery and move into phase two-'

#Thlayli's Trick or Treat #Thlayli-writes #cm punk #drew mcintyre #punkintyre #wrestling fanfiction #wwe fan fiction #fic request #cw noncon #cw dubcon #cw breeding

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datura-tea · 7 months ago

Text

okey dokey! i just finished the fallout show! some Thoughts under the read more

tl:dr, the (bethesda) fallout vibes were definitely there. i liked it as a show on its own merits but as a part of the series canon... i'm mad, and that anger is kind of overriding the little i liked about it. overall maybe 2.5/5 stars and im being generous

things i liked:

visually, it's stunning - i could see scenes already being made into gifsets - the color grading is pretty good; even in dark scenes i could see and understand what was happening

the sets are soooo good!! costume design was alright too

title cards were fun and cute

they did some interesting stuff with the cultures of both vault 33 and the brotherhood of steel

they used the sound effects from the games :)

i liked the wastelanders!!! big npc and random encounter energy. i kind of want a whole show of just them. for example i love the marketplace and settlement in filly; it feels very lived in

the background characters weren't just young thin able-bodied conventionally attractive white people :) there's so many elders, which i loved!! ma june and barv were cool. i love gruff old lesbians

lucy!!! she was already kind of weird and a little off-putting even in vault 33 ("what's your sperm count" as an opener to the husband she was just arranged married to is WILD) and i like that. she's sweet and bullheaded and surprisingly competent :)

maximus is kind of an ass, but is also a pathetic nerd and brotherhood dickrider who actually doesn't really know anything. kind of a girlfailure

the ghoul was pretty cool too!! i liked him, though more for his prewar story than the one he has post-apocalypse

lucy's brother norman kinda grew on me. "i lack enthusiasm for every job that i do here" so relateable. also short king <3

THE DENTIST THAT BUYS TEETH. never thought that would be a Thing but now that i think about it, it makes sense

the monsters that we have were cool!! wish there had been more of them

MATT BERRY IS IN THIS!! i just really like him so i got excited :))

maximus and lucy's "wanna have sex?" talk LMAO

vault 4's various mutations!!

those giant unwieldy fuckass duffel bags that brotherhood squires lug around hahahhahahaaha

vault 4 and its genetic experiments because its main conceit is that it was ruled by scientists who hybridized humans. it's exactly the right amount of fucked up i want in a vault

i like that the protagonists regularly get captured and eat shit

FRED ARMISEN IS ALSO HERE

haha hacking minigame :) also chatting via terminals (and im assuming pipboys?) is canon now

they're growing crops in the wasteland + bustling trade + livestock + pets yay

robobrain was cute

things i was just ok with:

dane, the they/them brotherhood of steel aspirant who was fucked over so maximus can get their spot as a squire LMAO what a waste of a potentially cool character

IT'S SO FUNNY that there's yodelling whenever the ghoul comes into the scene ????? WHY

fight scenes.... pretty good but someone definitely had the bloody mess perk (i don't do well with gore so ew yucky). also lots of [VATS NOISE]

pipboy was not used as much as i thought it would be

cousin stuff... i get it, i guess in a vault you'd have a lot of cousins and not a lot of choice, so some incest would probably happen

the ghoul being vault boy's inspiration?? not sure what to feel about that tbh

the casual dismemberments... and equally casual attaching of limbs... not even prosthetic limbs.....

the vaulties eating good healthy well-balanced meals. giving out caviar in the welcome basket. kinda 50/50 on it

the vault 31 - 32 - 33 subplot couldve been more fucked up

have brotherhood knights always been celibate or did i miss the memo

there are regular chickens and... deer? for some reason?

the ghoul's design. it's fine in action but mostly it's meh

the vault 4 cult for moldaver

vault 4 as a refuge for shady sands survivors. im mad about it but like. i get it

that guys "elixir" (some altered jet??) fixing everything about thaddeus' foot instantenously AND GIVING HIM HEALING POWERS???

things i did not like:

lucy's plot premise is very much fallout 3 redux

lucy and maximus as a ship is very meh and kind of forced and not compelling. go give us nothing!!!

wilzig's head as a macguffin that everyone is after... ehh kind of just okay as a plot device

also the ghoul randomly eating that other ghoul???

the squire who bullied maximus calls himself fat but he isn't fat?? not even chubby??? hello????? just got a soft face

water chip being fucked feels very fallout 3 also but they kind of dropped it?

they definitely named cooper howard after todd. as tribute probably, which he doesn't deserve

fiend = cannibal now?????

maximus recognizing vault 4 as a cult but not recognizing the brotherhood as one lol

vault tec evil capitalism vs hollywood communists storyline was kind of basic. and bland. and weak

the enclave could've been established + explored better

no geckos or any other west coast-specific monsters

showing me ncr ranger armor when the ncr is gone

ghouls have healing powers?? WITHOUT RADIATION??

things i hated hated hated:

the ghoul needing drugs to combat the Disease That Turns Ghouls Feral

feral ghouls being basically zombies :/

IN EPISODE FIVE. THEY REVEAL. THAT SHADY SANDS. WAS BOMBED. THE ENTIRE NCR. WAS BOMBED. IN 2277. THE YEAR OF THE FIRST BATTLE OF HOOVER DAM

BASICALLY RETCONNED FNV?? IM PUTTING MY EARS IN MY FINGERS AND GOING LA LA LAAAAA

VAULT-TEC DROPPED THE BOMBS ???? BIG MT + MR HOUSE BEING IN ON IT????

THE BIG STUPID FUCKING REVEAL IN EPISODE EIGHT?? THAT THE OVERSEER BOMBED SHADY SANDS BECAUSE HIS WIFE DIDN'T WANT TO GO HOME WITH HIM??? FUCK THAT???

the brotherhood being the main faction of the west coast now. booo!! booo!!!!

the fucking last shot of new vegas being a burnt out husk. probably foreshadowing that hank is going to house's body but. UGH I HATE IT

to summarize: it came out strong! and stumbled hard falling face fucking first at the finish line. i would have liked it a lot more if it did not shit on the west coast as much as it did. because what the FUCK. if it was set literally anywhere else and left the ncr alone i would have liked it more, because on its own, as a self-contained story, divorced from the rest of the fallout series canon, it's not bad!!! it's fun, there's some good bits, it has the ~vibes~ but - and this is a big but - i don't know what it's trying to say. it's all very surface level and the very vague themes i picked up on are not really reiterated in the plot

it's like... the bits that make it fallout are there. vaults. the brotherhood. ghouls. a dog named dogmeat. but there's something lacking. it's like your usual sci-fi post-apocalypse show with a fallout veneer. idk. i like it for what it is but also i hate it for what it's emblematic of. that's all

#fallout show #spoilers #fallout show spoilers #shh peri shhh #i liked it but also i didn't #hope that helps!#watch it but probably pirate it i think #anyway it's 5am im going to bed #im trying to be positive. it's not all bad. but it sucks

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mecachrome · 7 months ago

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omg k i just saw ur top 3 landoscar moments post from october 2023... any changes/updates since then? new moments made it onto the list? or if not... favorite moment of 2024 so far? (i just like hearing (reading?) ur thoughts it's like reading an intellectual (but still sappy in my fave way) bedtime story 🥰)

hklsdfhlsfhd naurrr... this is so embarrassing why am i still deeply landoscarpilled 6 months later 😔

but honestly i have been thinking about this and the sheer volume of crasyinsane material and lore we've accrued since last year because now i'm like how would you even begin constructing a top 3....... the possibilities are endless!!!

in terms of pre-october content that i might have missed before, i'd say most of this ask still holds (lando's biggest fan dot mp4 will NEVER lose its insanity to me. quintessential landoscar meta as far as i'm concerned) but now i also desperately need 2 shout out portrait painting challenge...... when it came out i was of course susceptible to the "you look beautiful" bantz though mostly just wrote it off as shipbait and since then i've looked back on this video multiple times and been like ?! why was oscar's deference to lando so insane actually.... i've alr mentioned this b4 but 1) oscar taking lando's intro in stride and immediately responding i am ready lando norris 2) oscar playfully acquiescing and letting lando use purple after he'd already chosen it 3) >like 5 seconds later. "you like purple don't you?" "uhhhh... i can do now" (who says that.) 4) another stunning display of lando Nooticing and fixating on oscar's hair swoop and last but not least 5) the way oscar FOLDS OVER and giggles helplessly when lando tells him i've just done you all pink ??? like. OKAY. cheers

looking @ recent content..... personally i find 814 so fascinating because while there are many Discrete Moments i can point out that make my brain explode i also feel like to some degree the reason we (? or maybe just me. again i apologize for the nonsensical drivel i create) love to make parallel gifsets of them is because they have such an understated dynamic built off many minute unspoken habits and wordless exchanges and essentially Patterns so there is less of like... a need for spontaneous intimacy.... if that makes sense. it's about the consistency of reciprocal comfort... iterations..... palisades palisades......... ok this is totally not related to the ask i've just been rotating it in my mind

anyway 10 personable favs !!! arranged chronologically

finish the lyrics (oct 2023): a deeply obvious one but you can't Not include it 😩 i can't believe this came out a week after i answered that because seriously what da hell. @ OSCAR PIASTRI WHAT IS WRONG WITH YEWWWWWWWW. there are sooooo many things i could mention here that i feel have already been exhaustively expounded, the most obvious of course being the classic ojp Heart Eyes moment(s) (Many such cases......but also specifically the love story one) (like i'd argue silverstone was mostly responsible for getting 814 off the ground BUT this video was when their dynamic became the most "mainstream" and accessible to fandom as a whole... the amount of non-f1 fans i saw qrting reups of that clip!!!!) anyway but then you also get 👉 whatever the inside joke they have about old town road is. oscar saying "i reckon you'd be unreal in a karaoke bar in japan" which i still think is such a Line... just me ??? the way he verryryryyyy softly sings "yes" with lando at the end of their love story karaoke and the insane camera angle of him just out of focus. like. really in general there is just such a soft and lighthearted and Fun air to their dynamic in this video that makes me ;__; AND this is another prime moment of lando narrating oscar's firsts for him (singing on camera at mcl!!!) . ALSAURR lando tapping oscar on the bicep while sarcastically complimenting him. once again for two guys who never touch it compels me... actually i could go on about this video tbh like how oscar nearly falls off the couch giggling at lando playing the songs together and then it cuts to the next one and he's suddenly all flushed and his bangs have gotten all fucked up. he's so... they're so... let's move on.

splunk sim city challenge (nov 2023): many classic lines such as "i haven't even distracted you yet!" + oscar knowing his podium year and lando saying "you're a nerd!" + lando going ":) :o are you okay?" and so on... general setup of this challenge was crasy tbh. how it revolves around disrupting the other person's focus and the visual asymmetry of one being sat higher and having to lean over to distract them and how oscar just giggles goodnaturedly when lando sticks his cue cards in front of his face instead of getting annoyed and—SO ON. also forever obsessed with how oscar wordlessly lifts his eyebrows at lando at the end lol

that one sticker video (nov 2023): this video is insaaAAANEEEE to me. ANYONE ELSE??? first of all oscar and lando gingerly standing across each other on either side of the flower bed (while zak brown assumes a power stance directly on it lmfao) is already so visually overwhelming but then the way oscar glances up as he's removing the sticker from the cap, how you can seeeeee him calculating the move the entire time and being adorably pleased about it, @__@ the way lando grins at him afterward... (also crying at zb glancing at them and being equally charmed by their antics) wahhh TT__TT the vibes of this clip... immaculate

oscar thanking lando in their final post-race message (nov 2023): honestly the entire message in general but :__) one of my fav 814 moments OAT is oscar including lando in his thank you speech and lando not really expecting it and being genuinely touched by the gesture. lando is so endearingly fidgety the entire time honestly and the way he perks up a bit and wrings his hands together and playfully smiles at oscar when he mentions him... okayyy. anyway 2 me it's reminiscent of yes/no challenge "am i the funniest teammate you've ever had?" "(shyly) yeahhh... you're up there" (said in the same baby-ish voice as "so... lando?" UGH. UGHHHH) and how lando genuinely gets a bit awkwardly flustered by it like!!! god. wait ALSO i don't have the space for this so i'm throwing in end of season awards MMMM debatable + how gleefully lando threw oscar under the bus and in general just the incredible expression work going on for both of them during this exchange. God [2]

si rapid fire questions (dec 2023): this video was crucial in determining that oscar... well. is obsessed with accommodating and mirroring lando. many things we already knew (aka listening to whatever music lando listens to; insert prema lap "maybe i should move to an english team because the music's better" moment here) but equally important is oscar "stealing" lando's dinner, how lando presses him on the back to the future question until oscar just changes his answer to his, and of course as you know per my blog title NO I'M GOING TO KEEP YOU HAPPY is in my eyes top 5 most insane things oscar piastri has ever said. likeee... lando showing a bit of jokey remorse over enforcing his rules (don't even get me started about lando and game/challenge rules...) but oscar being sooo determined 2 honor his teasing 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 :melting_face: x100!!!

need to split this into two lists because apparently there's a div character limit 😔 continuing on

hilton spa ad (feb 2024): of course this pained me because of This Moment (specifically lando bringing his hand back down when oscar tried to lift it from beneath him 😮‍💨) but that is neither here nor there. obsessed with the salmon at the engineering table anecdote because the most logical explanation for oscar Not doing that anymore is because lando didn't like it... or he just eats different things now but we already know that he's adopted lando's preferred meal b4 so that's equally a lot 2 digest !!! also >the callback to their one million LOOK AT YOU/HIM moments >how they touch shoulders exactly Once when they sit down and then never again despite lando continuously leaning into oscar's space to get to the button... eugh. also just top tier oscar faces + hair 🥰

opening title behind the scenes (mar 2024): thinking about all the hilarious gifsets of this moment that i ate up deliciously 🧡🧡🧡 this was such a significant reminder of how 814 have just gotten like, exceedingly comfortable around each other & have learned 2 communicate via the most inscrutable expressions and noises and gestures that somehow suit Them perfectly x__x although i doubt they will ever really become ~effusive~ with each it's frankly even more devastating that they both help each other care less about maintaining appearances / how they often get so sucked into their interactions (see next bullet point) that everything else kind of just fades away in that instant.... all right ⚠️⚠️⚠️ maybe that's a bit of a stretch but we can pretend for the rpf lens!!! see also my tag spiel in this beautiful tuva gifset.

photo day antics (mar 2024): do you ever just...... what went on in bahrain. honestly. more from this weekend in a second but this video plus the accompanying photo encapsulate their dynamic so perfectly it makes me scream... how 814 are not only so annoyingly focused on each other all the time but also stand SOOO UNNECESSARILY CLOSE while every other teammate pairing is spaced out normally. yuki and checo glancing at them alksfdhdf 😭 truly so ridiculous that the poor photo person tried to get lando's attention and they pretended to comply for two seconds before oscar was lifting his foot to show lando his boot again. also why did it take oscar a million years to step away from lando and put a more appropriate amount of space between them...?! and even then it was barely that much........... (10 paragraphs of speaking later) I prefer really not to speak.

accidental waist grab (mar 2024): this gave me psychic damage so bad i should be lobotomized. we've already spoken about this perhaps erm excessively but why did lando feel the need to stand JUST as close to him if not closer after they broke apart. there was truly no need...... honestly the way this ship will have us looking up driver cams and staring at esteban ocon's ass as he gets out his car just for a single glimpse of their parc fermé dynamic.

bahrain post-race interview antics (mar 2024): You already knowwwww. the sky sports "he follows me everywhere" moment is equally important but the f1tv interview giving us horrifically natural banter (juxtaposing this with their previous interview moments...), lando's dumb faux australian accent and oscar playing along as always, and most of all them HIJACKING THE INTERVIEW & commiserating on camera together ❓❗️ lichrally the grid photo all over again. often when i have emotions over an 814 moment i worry that i sound overly He_Only_Got_Two_Eyes.jpeg but truly sometimes two people are just objectively insane. plus land of piastri/lando piastri.....

also runner up is the f1tv interview with lawrence aka lando's cooing noise @ oscar discussing lily (anyone else frame by frame color pick oscar's face to see how badly he flushed... no? just me?) + the beautiful self-aware surfacing of the CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS of their relationship...... !!! love when 2 guys expose and confirm their own sincerity in trying to verbally resist it. hem

is this anything. sorry eve LKSFDHLDHSF thank u for the ask & pls lmk what ur fav moments are too 🧡

#ask #i need to stop answering asks like this. sorry #814 meta

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eddiediaaz · 1 year ago

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hi lovely!! do you have any tips on making cool fun and sexy typography?

hey joanna!! this made me giggle haha, i'm not quiiiite sure how to answer that, but here are some tips i keep in my when i do typography, and some examples:

FONTS

don't be afraid to "shop" for fonts and try funky fonts you've never used/seen. i often try so many before settling. i almost always use at least 2 different font for gifsets, even 3 sometimes. i think a good font pairing can do a lot for a gif. it's usually something like:

serif + cursive/funky fonts (example)

sans serif + cursive/funky fonts (example)

serif + sans serif fonts (example)

two different cursive/funky fonts (example)

or even simply the same font but all caps + all lowercase (example)

in case you're unsure where too start or want inspiration, here's a great resource: usergif's font pairing guide and its fonts page

BLEND MODES & LAYER STYLES

i think playing around with different blend modes and layer styles will always elevate your typography game, in my opinion. it's usually a bit more dynamic than just an opaque color. tho this minimalist typography can also be really good.

when you double click on a text layer, you get all the layer style options, as well as the blend modes. a very popular layer style is setting the layer's blending option to difference, paired with a color and/or gradient overlay (often set to multiply/color dodge). a drop shadow is also important so the text is more easily readable. we often see a black soft drop shadow, but don't hesitate to be creative with it, for example a thick, hard line, colorful drop shadow.

i feel like this step often takes the most time for me because the possibilities are endless. definitely play around with layer styles, especially drop shadow, color overlay, gradient overlay, stroke. and also try different blending modes for these settings.

as for the layer's blend mode, also definitely play around with them. and keep in mind that the text's color will also give a different result, it doesn't have to be white + blend mode set to difference, even tho this is a classic that works well.

TEXT WRAPING & POSITION

a great feature on photoshop is definitely the text warping tool. to access it, right click on a text layer and go "warp text". from there you'll get a few different styles and setting sliders. my favorites are flag and wave (example). you can always go back to edit these settings once they're done by right clicking again. and you can even keyframe/animate these settings!

typography doesn't always have to be centered and straight, i often prefer it on a side and rotated a little. you can easily rotate typography by selecting the layer(s) and hitting ctrl + T. you can also play with the skew and pespective after hitting ctrl + T by right clicking the canvas and clicking on either. these will give different ways to move your text.

SIZING

i love playing around with different font sizes, it makes the typography more interesting in my opinion, and it's a way to emphasize some words.

so for that reason i usually put each word on a different layer so i can edit each word separately. sometimes i will also put each letter on a different layer, because it can be interesting to offset/rotate some letters sometimes (example) (another example).

i often pair a quite small serif or sans serif font with a much bigger funky font (example). and often that bigger font will also have different sized words (example). i play around a lot with this!

ADDED EFFECTS

there are some things than can be done to enhance typography:

adding a colorful rectangle block behind the text (example)

using text symbols such as quotation marks or backets (example)

using lines around the text (example) (another example)

these can definitely bring typography to a different level

MORE RESOURCES

great font website

usergif's typography tag

my fonts tag

this is all i can think of right now, i hope it helps :D if you have any question on a specific text effect let me know, i can definitely make a tutorial!

#alie replies #silversmists #typography #photoshop #*ps help #resource #completeresources #allresources #resourcemarket #usercats #userabs #userpjo

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kimtaegis · 11 months ago

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This Christmas I'd like to share my love for this community by doing a little Xmas Gift Giving! I prepared some little presents that I would love to exchange for just one simple thing:

Send me an ask or make a post tagging me (#annietrack) in which you give a person that's part of armyblr the love they deserve. Whether it be you telling them how much they brightened your year, if there was a post of them that made you especially happy, what you wish for them for 2024, it's completely up to you; you can even gift them something, like a gif(set) or any other kind of art!

Of all the people who participate I will randomly choose five people that will receive some little presents from me. The presents are

🌙 1x Jimin's Photofolio with all inclusions ❄️ 1x 2 official photocards of your choice from my small pool of pc's that I would've sold otherwise (all in great condition) + lots of freebies 🎁 3x one bts gifset of your choice from me; it can be anything you want (yes, also a huge compilation if you'd like!)

Christmas at Annie's (I'm laughing writing this) will end on Taehyung's birthday, 12am KST on Saturday 30th December 2023. I will announce who will receive the gifts on Sunday, 7th January 2024 and will then contact the persons privately as well.

I kindly ask for you to follow me and reblog this post if you participate (reblogging just to spread the celebration is very welcome)!

For some more (important) info, please read below!

Lots of love,

Annie

I will cover all costs to get the first two presents to you (worldwide).

If you're only interested in one or two of these gifts, just put the respective emoji somewhere in your ask or in the tags! If there're no emojis, your name will come in all three selection pools (but please note: you will only receive one present max. I will randomly pick names in the pool order: Photofolio, photocards, gifsets. e.g. If you receive the photofolio, I'll take your name out of the other two pools. I hope this makes sense, if not, let me know!).

Since a lot of you like to keep yourselves anonymously/ might be too shy to express their love for someone openly, I would like to offer the option of sending asks on anon as well. In this case, please think of a unique pseudonym (no emojis please) which I can add to the participants' list(s). If you get chosen to receive a gift, please contact me on anon again, telling me your username so we can talk about everything else. I will keep your identity a secret, I promise.

Please please please tag or otherwise make clear who your ask or post is dedicated to so I can make sure they'll see it!!

I will start shipping out the presents the following week after the announcement!

Lastly, here are pictures of the Photofolio and the photocard pool for your consideration (I apologise for the quality of the pc photo; it's already dark as I'm uploading this)

#I'll put this in the most frequented tags:#btsgif #userbangtan #bts #and tag some belovedst (hope it's okay):#usersky #userkelli #trackofthesoul #usermaggie #tuserandi #userpat #idk this was kind of an impulsive decision I made while wrapping presents lol #I just felt like the tumblr fandom is swindling more and more and that we should kind of... spread some love for those who are still here?#idk. I hope everything makes sense #love youuuuu #christmas at annie’s

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runnning-outof-time · 2 years ago

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Birmingham | Tommy Shelby x Reader (Part 20)

Previous Part

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x reader

Summary: Plans of taking over the tracks get thwarted quickly for the Shelbys as trouble makes its way into Birmingham. Tommy tells (Y/N) to stay away, but of course she can't for too long. Everything gets laid out on the table after a scary experience shakes the both of them.

Warnings: drinking, series typical violence, canon death, injury, blood

Word Count: 4426

A/N: here it is everyone…the final chapter of Birmimgham! Thank you so much to those of you who have stuck with this story…through the break and the drawn out postings. I finished it for you. I’d love to know what you think of how it ended (since I went with the winner of the poll; which was giving a ending that felt finished). Enjoy! :)

A/N 2: the italicized dialogue is taken from the show. I’d also like to give a special thanks to @alicent-targaryen for making the amazing gifsets that helped me write this chapter so quickly — they gave me so much inspiration! :) also if you’d ever like to know what the original ending for this was…feel free to reach out to me…if I get enough interest, I may just write it as a short.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!

The story is finished! — I hope you enjoyed!

"Is Tommy here, or has he left already?" (Y/N) asked Polly after she entered the Watery Lane home. She found the older woman working on cleaning the mantle in the living room, and she couldn't stop herself from blurting the question out.

"He should still be upstairs," Polly answered, not even bothering to turn and properly greet (Y/N). It seemed as though she was deep into working on something.

"Can I go up?" (Y/N) asked hesitantly, not wanting to cross any lines.

Her question made Polly turn and look at her. The older woman quirked an eyebrow, probably wondering why the question was even being asked. "If you wish to. His door is at the end of the hall," she answered (Y/N)'s question. (Y/N) nodded, saying a quick thank you before she made her way to the stairs of the home.

She walked down the hall, stopping at the last door and taking a pause before she knocked on it. "Come," his voice came from inside the room, making her twist the knob and open the door. She saw him standing at the dresser, finishing up shaving.

"Hi, Tommy," she said softly, making him stop what he was doing and turn to face her.

"It's early, (Y/N)," he commented, surprised by her presence.

"I know, but I was unable to stay away...ever since you told me today would be the day; my mind won't stop," she explained her reason for being there. She'd been worried about everything that would happen today and couldn't stop herself from going to see Tommy before he left for the races.

Tommy finished up what he was doing, grabbing a rag so that he could wipe his face off before he then gave his attention to (Y/N). He could see the slight bit of worry behind her eyes, and he hated that it was there. For a moment he felt bad that he'd been the one to create it, but worry or not, he knew that she understood what had to be done.

"When will you go?" she asked him, breaking the silence that had fallen in the room.

"In a few hours," he gave a vague estimation, "I need to touch base with my brothers. There'll be a family meeting at half ten; there we'll discuss what will be done. I'd say that we'll be leaving shortly after that," he explained what had been on his list to accomplish. "You can come to the meeting, if you'd like," he then extended an invitation.

"I'll come," (Y/N) nodded, making her decision rather quickly. She figured that hearing his plan in full might serve to give her some solace.

"Good," Tommy nodded, a ghost of a smile teetering on his lips, "we'll be set after this, (Y/N)," he said to her then, his words riddled with confidence. (Y/N) smiled upon hearing it. She loved how self-assured he was; it was almost contagious.

"I'm worried," she said then, retreating back to her own way of thinking. She was itching to reach out and take hold of him from the second she'd walked in, but she didn't know if that would be received well or not. The last thing she wanted was him upset with her as he embarked on this big scheme.

"You shouldn't be," he assured her, "we've got the Lees on our side thanks to John and Esme, and Kimber will think that we're going to fight that family instead of taking to the pitches. He won't expect what'll actually happen," he gave her the rundown of his plan, still holding a great deal of confidence in it. Things were going to go his way today; he could already feel it.

"Ok," (Y/N) nodded along, trying to switch her thinking for his, "and I'll stay here...with Pol to make sure everything runs well on this end," she addressed her part in the plan.

"Good," Tommy nodded. He paused then, pulling his timepiece out so that he could check it. "Love, I should go now," he said as he slipped the watch back into its pocket.

"Ok," she repeated what she'd just said, "I just wanted to see you before you left."

"Come to the meeting," he said to her, a slight smile on his face.

"I will," she assured him, smiling also as she nodded her head.

"Come on," he said then, moving forward and placing his hand to the small of her back as he led her out of the bedroom and over to the stairs. She descended them first with him following behind. "I'll see you at half ten," he told her, walking to the door as she decided she'd stay back and see if Polly needed any help before then. It wouldn't be long until the time for the meeting came anyway; she might as well stick around.

Polly did in fact need help with minor things, and the women quickly got busy with them, passing the time between the meeting like (Y/N) hoped they would. It wasn't long until everyone was gathered in the empty betting shop; all eyes focused on Tommy as he explained the plan (Y/N) had got a preview of in full detail.

"Any other questions?" Tommy asked once he was finished explaining the plans. He looked around the room, waiting for anyone to speak up.

"Yes," it was Polly who answered as she made her way to the door that separated the betting floor from the home, "does anyone object if I bring a newcomer to the meeting?" she asked, looking around the room. Silence came in response, making her move over to the door so that she could open it slightly and whisper "come on," to whoever it was on the other side. She then opened the door wider to show Ada, who had Karl in her arms. "I'd like to introduce the newest member of the Shelby clan," she announced, a smile on her face.

(Y/N)'s cheeks were hurting from the wideness of her smile as her friend took a step further into the room. It was so good to see her back with her family again. Arthur was the one to start the clapping, and soon the room was filled with applause as Ada walked into the room. She stopped where (Y/N) was standing and gave her a smile, to which (Y/N) sent one of her own back.

"Welcome home, Ada," Tommy said to his sister, a smile forming on his lips. It warmed (Y/N)'s heart to see the progress being made.

She then explained the baby's name, earning some laughs from the group that was gathered around her. Arthur then went over to see the baby, taking him from Ada's arms and placing his peaked cap on top of his head. (Y/N) laughed along with the rest of the group as John poked fun at his older brother. Ada sent (Y/N) a smile before Tommy addressed her, asking if he was forgiven. (Y/N) stayed behind and watched Ada move over to him, telling him he was. She felt her heart swell as they shared a hug.

"It's so good to see you back with your family," (Y/N) said to Ada once she'd come back to her side. Tommy and the other men had gotten together to talk finer details of what would be going down. (Y/N) decided to stay with the women instead of learning more of the plan, feeling more comfortable watching Esme make exaggerated faces at the baby than hearing about how they were going to take over the races.

—

After things were finished at the shop, Tommy and the men decided to go to the Garrison to have a drink before they hit the road for the races. (Y/N) offered to join and help out, knowing that things would go smoother if there was another set of hands - hands that knew what they were doing - behind the bar pouring drinks.

Things were going well. (Y/N) was pouring with Tommy and the two had slipped into a comfortable routine. She wasn't going to lie, she quite enjoyed working in these close quarters with him. All was well...until it wasn't.

Arthur entered the Garrison with Jeremiah trailing close behind him. Both men were walking like they were on a mission. "Tommy," Arthur called for his brother, his gruff voice making just about all of the celebrations stop. "I need to talk to you," he said, his seriousness holding as he nodded his head to the stockroom that was behind the bar. Tommy glanced at (Y/N), who was becoming more confused by the second, before he followed his brother and friend into the room.

They were only gone for a matter of seconds before coming back out. "(Y/N)..." he started, coming right over to her, a sense of urgency in his movements and vocal tone. "(Y/N), I need you to leave now, ok?" he said to her, his eyes wide as he spoke; a tell-tale sign that he was now under pressure and needed things to be done timely and in a certain way.

"Wha...why?" she asked, her brows furrowed in confusion.

"Billy Kimber and his men are coming this way," he told her, "I need you to stay clear of here, you understand me?" he searched her eyes then, his hands blindly searching for hers. It didn't take much to find them, and when he did, he squeezed them for added effect, "stay away from here," he told her again.

"Ok. Ok, I will," she nodded her head, sensing his urgency and falling in line with it, "I'll go and be with Pol and Ada, and I'll wait there for you," she then told him where he could find her.

"Good," Tommy nodded lightly, feeling relieved that she wasn't going to be mixed up in the middle of this developing plan. He was going to need to fight Kimber on his own turf now. It was something he could do, but he wanted to make sure that the people he cared for the most were out of harm's way. "Go on," he said then, dropping her hands so that he could let her leave.

(Y/N)'s heart dropped slightly at the abrupt loss of warmth his hands were giving her, but she didn't have much time to dwell on it as she was following his orders, exiting the Garrison at a hasty speed so that she could get to Watery Lane before all hell broke loose.

Tommy watched her as she went, keeping his eyes on her until she was out of his sight before he focused on the men that had gathered in front of him, waiting for their leader to give them direction.

—

(Y/N) was out of breath when she finally got to Watery Lane. She entered the house promptly, hoping that either one, or both, of the women that she was looking for would be present. To her relief, they both were sitting in the living room.

"Where have you run from?" Polly questioned her, a look of confusion forming on her face.

"I...I just came...Tommy told me to..." she stammered out, resting her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath, hoping that doing so would allow her to get out a complete sentence.

"Come, sit down, love," Polly coaxed her over to the open chair and (Y/N) listened, moving over to sit and take a few more calming breaths. "Tell us when you're ready," she said to the younger woman, both her and Ada waiting intently for the news it seemed she had.

"I ran from the Garrison. The plans have changed...Billy Kimber's on his way here to make a stand. Tommy told me to stay away from the tavern. He thinks that it's going to happen there," (Y/N) explained once her breathing was normal again.

"Bloody hell," Polly hissed, exhaling a sigh as she heard the news, "they're going to get themselves killed."

"I don't know any of the finer details...I just know that they're going to fight them here now," (Y/N) stated, trying to push down the worry that was bubbling up inside of her.

"I've got to go," Ada finally spoke in the midst of her rushing to stand from the couch.

(Y/N)'s brows furrowed as she watched her friend move around the room, grabbing the carriage she'd brought with her so that she could transfer a sleeping Karl into it. "Ada, wait...what are you doing?" she asked, confusion present in her tone.

"I'm going to go make these bloody men see sense," Ada spoke through gritted teeth, making it apparent that anger and frustration were coursing through her. She moved over to the archway that led to the door before stopping and looking at the women, "because I know the finer details of the day, and I refuse to stand by and let this happen," she didn't wait for a response to her pointed statement after uttering it, instead turning and walking through the archway and out the door.

"What does she mean?" (Y/N) asked Polly as soon as the door shut. She was so confused right now. Polly just looked defeated.

"Freddie was to be broken out of his transport earlier today...he was going to come home and help with the effort at the races, and this was all to be done in accordance to Tommy's plan," Polly filled (Y/N) in on what Ada was getting at.

(Y/N) sighed as she heard what the older woman had to say. "She's going to go and confront them, isn't she?" she asked in a blank tone.

"She very well may," Polly didn't give a straightforward answer. Ada was a Shelby after all...Shelbys did what they wanted and rarely cared about the dangers that stood in their way.

(Y/N) knew this all too well. Ada was going to go and confront these two gangs of men. She stood from the chair with an exasperated sigh. Tommy's voice echoed in her mind as she stood; warning her not to go anywhere near the Garrison. She pushed it back, knowing that that was exactly where her friend was going. "I'm going to go and try to stop her, Pol," she informed the other woman as she walked towards the archway.

"Be careful, (Y/N)," Polly offered some words of advice, making (Y/N) nod before she walked through the archway and out of the Watery Lane home.

—

"I want you all to look at me!" (Y/N) heard Ada's voice echo through the empty streets as she ran as fast as she could to the Garrison. Upon turning the corner, she saw two lines of men, the groups facing each other. Ada was smack-dab in the middle, addressing both lines as they had their guns pointed at each other. She's going to get herself killed! (Y/N) thought to herself as she picked up her pace. "Who will be wearing black for you? Think about them. Think about them right now...and fight if you want to, but that baby ain't moving anywhere, and neither am I," she continued, her voice raw and full of emotion.

"Ada!" (Y/N) called to her friend as she made her way through the line of men whom she recognized to be the Peaky Blinders. "Ada, you can't be doing this!" she exclaimed, her eyes frantic as she rushed out into the middle of the standoff in hopes to get her friend to see some sense. "This isn't your war to get into the middle of. This isn't the place for you, or for your baby," she insisted, her eyes locked onto the other woman's as she tried to get her out of the middle of it all.

"I won't move, (Y/N)," Ada stayed persistent.

"If not for your own safety, do it for Karl," (Y/N) didn't back down, "this isn't your war to try to stop," she repeated her previous statement, trying to keep her voice steady as adrenaline started to fill her. She tried so hard not to think of what was standing on either side of her at the moment, putting her sole focus on her friend. "Come on...move for Karl," she said again, her voice softer now as she nodded to the carriage that was off to the side. They held each other's gaze before Ada just barely nodded her head. (Y/N) saw it though, and she moved Ada off to the side, hyper-aware of all of the eyes following her.

"She's right you know..." Billy Kimber was the first to speak up once the women were off to the side, "why should all you men die?" he asked the men surrounding him before looking forward, "it should just be them who've caused it," he accentuated his statement by brandishing his weapon and firing it twice.

(Y/N) squeezed her eyes shut and spun to shield both Ada and the carriage as best she could as pandemonium broke out in the street. Several men were screaming and Karl's cries had intensified before there was one more gunshot.

Tommy was the next person to speak. "Enough!" he yelled, causing everything to halt at once. (Y/N), even though her eyes were still closed, felt relieved that he was still speaking, because that meant he was still alive. "Kimber and me fought this battle one on one. It's over. Go home to your families!" he addressed the men standing across from him.

Nothing else was said as the sound of footsteps rang out, signaling to (Y/N) that people were walking away. She heard Tommy mumble something to someone, and more footsteps were heard then. She stayed by Ada and Karl, unable to really move as she took some steadying breaths.

"Ada..." a man's voice came from the women's left.

"Freddie," Ada breathed, moving from the carriage to go to the man who had approached them.

"Don't scare us like that," he said to her, allowing her to fall into his arms and cling to him. He closed his eyes and rested his chin on the top of her head as he held her tight against him.

(Y/N) smiled softly as she watched them reunite, feeling the emotion radiating off of them. She finally looked back at the street then, seeing that everyone else had cleared off of it. Worried about the rest of the men - especially one in particular - she left the couple's side and hurried to the doors of the Garrison.

She was met with agonizing screams as she opened the doors, and immediately realized that they were coming from Tommy. Hearing them made her heart drop to her stomach. Had he been shot? she wondered, worry immediately filling her body.

Arthur was the one to notice her presence amidst trying to help get the bullet out of his brother's shoulder, "go and wait in the stockroom, love, you don't want to be seein' this," he told her and she nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat and not asking any questions before she made a b-line to the stockroom behind the bar.

She waited there as time passed painstakingly slowly. Hearing Tommy scream out in pain was breaking her heart. She wished there was something, anything, she could do to help.

Then everything became quiet again. She heard some talking, but it was muffled by the door that she'd closed. She decided to stay in the room even though it seemed that the worst of it was over. A few more minutes passed before the door opened to reveal Tommy.

(Y/N) didn't wait for another second. She was walking over to him the second she saw him, her hands raising so that she could take his cheeks into them and bring his lips to hers. She kissed him passionately and with everything she had in her. Tommy's hands found the sides of her waist so that he could hold her against him, prolonging the kiss...as if she was going to pull away anyway.

"What was that for?" he breathed out once they'd pulled away.

"For scaring me," she answered him, an involuntary shudder coursing through her as she let her eyes drop to the bloody shirt that he was wearing. He's ok...he's standing in front of you, she told herself, her eyes finding his again.

Tommy chuckled at her statement, squeezing her waist slightly before he leaned in and kissed her again. (Y/N) happily accepted it, slipping her hands from his cheeks to the back of his neck as she reveled in the feeling of their lips moving together seamlessly. Nothing ever felt this good.

"And that was for?" she asked once she pulled away, breathless this time. She couldn't stop the smile from forming on her face as she looked at him again.

"An apology for scaring you," he told her, his words making her tip her head back slightly as she let out a laugh.

His eyes were still on her when she looked at him again. His gaze made butterflies dance around in her stomach, and she couldn't help but encircle her arms around his neck so that she could hug him; her head resting against the uninjured side of his chest as she did so. She brought one of her hands down from the back of his neck to gently lift his jacket where the blood was present on his shirt. She couldn't see much, but she still had to ask: "you're ok, are you?" Her voice was much softer now, worry creeping back after the excitement of the kisses faded.

"I'm fine, love," he answered her, his voice coming out in a similar tone. "Come on...have a drink with me," he said then, loosening his hold on her waist. She got the message, dropping her hands from his neck so that he could step away and lead her out of the stockroom and back into the bar area. "Under the bar should be a bottle of champagne..." he started off as he walked around to the opposite side of the bar so that he could stand across from her.

"Going for fancy today, are we?" (Y/N) couldn't help but grin as she grabbed the unopened bottle from one of the lower shelves.

"Figured we should...since we're celebrating," Tommy grinned right back at her, watching as she set the bottle on the bartop before going to grab two glasses. As she did that, he turned and rested his back against the bar, taking some of the weight off of his feet. He let out a sigh as he tipped his head back, reveling in a moment of peace after so much chaos.

"Is everything ok?" (Y/N) asked after she turned around and found him.

"Yeah," he breathed, pushing himself off of the bar and turning around to stand straight and face her again, nodding his head then for extra effect. (Y/N) nodded back at him before she uncorked the bottle and worked on pouring it into both of the cups. She tried her best not to mess up under his gaze. She smiled at him once she was finished, handing him a glass before she picked her own up and took a sip from it. "How is it?" he asked, his eyes not leaving hers.

"It's good," (Y/N) answered with a nod and a soft smile.

"You know..." he began then, pausing a moment before continuing, "someone I trust once told me, and I believe they told me here; in this very spot...that people fall for people that they know; people that they've been around and feel comfortable with..." he trailed off, and (Y/N) felt her throat go dry. Those words sounded all too familiar...like the words that she'd told him when he was grappling with Ada being with Freddie. He took a deep breath before continuing, "I want you to help me, (Y/N). With the business, the family, with the whole fucking thing. I want you, no, I need you in my life."

"Tommy this is, wow..." she couldn't finish her sentence, taken back by what he'd just proclaimed. All of the dancing around her feelings for him had led to this...the moment she'd been secretly hoping for for so long. But now that it was here, she was fumbling. "I'm not sure of what to say..." she blubbered out, her nervousness shining clear in her words. She'd never wanted something more in her life...why had she chosen this moment to be awkward?!

"Yes would be a good thing to say," he said, cracking a grin as he noticed her trying to fight back her nervousness, "it'd be a great thing to say, actually."

"Then yes," she breathed, a smile breaking onto her face.

"Then yes," he repeated what she'd said, smiling also as he leaned across the bar to kiss her. She caught his chin, holding him there and making the kiss longer than he intended...not that he was complaining.

"I think we'd ought to leave," (Y/N) said after they'd pulled away from each other, "we've had enough excitement for one day...you should get home," she suggested.

"And what will you do?" he asked her, wondering if they'd now be parting ways after all that just happened. He really didn't want that to be the case.

"I thought that maybe I'd come with you...someone's got to make sure that you keep clean bandages on your shoulder," she answered him, unable to stop the smile from creeping onto her lips.

Tommy caught that, knowing what else she could be thinking that would make such a smile form on her face. "I like the sound of that," he said to her, also grinning before she walked around the bar to come to his side.

The day had truly been won. Not only had Tommy defeated Billy Kimber, but he'd finally let (Y/N) know how he felt about her...and to his relief, she'd felt the same about him.

And for (Y/N)...she had a feeling that she wasn't leaving Birmingham any time soon. That was something she was perfectly ok with.

Tagged: @mgcldydrms @the-anxious-youth @cloudofdisney @look-at-the-soul @elenavampire21 @mrsalwayswrite @julkaamazing @evita-shelby @lilyrachelcassidy @notyour-valentine @shelbydelrey @december16-1991 @onlydeadcells @peakyswritings @just-a-blackhole @watercolorskyy @strayrockette @peakyduchesss @alexxavicry @captivatedbycillianmurphy @yummycastiel @dark-academia-slut @tommystargirl @stevie75 @lyarr24 @signorellisantichrist @zablife @anotherblinder @midnightmagpiemama @cillmequick @l1-l4 @chlorrox @lostgirl219 @woofgocows @bdudette @mrkdvidal1989 @stephhevring @fictional-hooman @httyd-marauders @nataliewalker93 @rangerelik @thecraziestcrayon @cilliansangel @shaddixlife @tracysnook

SERIES MASTERLIST

#tommy shelby #tommy shelby x reader #tommy shelby x y/n #tommy shelby series #tommy shelby imagine #tommy shelby fanfic #tommy shelby fanfiction #peaky blinders #peaky blinders x reader #peaky blinders x y/n #peaky blinders series #peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders fanfic #peaky blinders fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic

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ranchthoughts · 11 months ago

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✨2023: A Summary✨

Post your most popular and/or favourite edit/gifset/analysis for each month (it’s okay to skip months!)

Tagged by @lurkingshan (here) and @wen-kexing-apologist (here). Thanks for the tags!

In 2023, I made 175 original posts, including 45 metas about 12 different shows and two large scale projects (the GMMTV Multiverse and the GMMTV Kissing charts). It was interesting to see what meta (and how much) I had written in which months. It's also fun looking back as I approach my one year anniversary of watching and writing about BL - I'm so grateful for all the wonderful people I've met and gotten to chat with over these past months!

January and February [0 metas]

I wasn’t on BL Tumblr yet! Any and all meta came in the form of thoughts, texts, and powerpoint presentations.

March [6 metas]

My BL Tumblr debut! I started this blog with the intention of 1) more easily gathering and archiving posts for future reference, and 2) collecting my thoughts somewhere other than text threads and my notes app, so I began posting meta the day I got here.

Most popular: what started as me thinking about Win’s rock t-shirt from ep 11 and then grew from there… - reading a lot into a random Thai ql shirt choice? Me?

Favourite(s): Thoughts on Tinn, his mother, and coming out (part 1, part 2); Thoughts on Tinn, his mother, and music - My first meta ever posted! I keep returning to Tinn and his mother's relationship in My School President...

April [1 meta]

By default, the most popular (and favourite): Gun's feelings are realistic - I love when MSP subverts our expectations

May [13 metas]

Oh damn! This was a big meta month for me. Some of my favourite metas I've ever written were posted this month.

Most popular: The Eighth Sense and Missing Pieces - I am really proud of this one. It also made me laugh that I apologized for the length at the beginning when I would go on to post much, MUCH longer metas.

Favourite(s): Thoughts on genre, tropes, Bad Buddy, and My School President (aka my Bad Buddy and MSP thesis, which began life as a powerpoint presentation... now here's one of those much, MUCH longer metas in question); Wai as a faen fatale (which also began life as part of that same powerpoint presentation and I think perfectly encapsulates my analytical style); Conversations in ITSAY that are about more than they seem (I am really proud of the analysis I did here and the writing style I used to present it). This was also the month in which I started my deeply self-indulgent GMMTV Multiverse project, which later inspired my mission to record all GMMTV kisses.

June [11 metas]

Oh nooo another bunch of my favourites. This is cruel to make me choose.

Most popular: Thinking about Pran's "Pat, you've got to stop doing this to me" (I love this one! and this was the first of several times I've gotten to collaborate with the wonderful @dudeyuri)

Favourite(s): An analysis of the baseball mom shirt, Bad Buddy ep. 5 (my entry into the venerable field of Bad Buddy/ql shirt analysis and also encapsulates pretty much everything I try to do in my metas); An impassioned defense of the Bad Buddy ep. 5 rooftop kiss (combines many of my favourite things: reading deeply into the minute details of Bad Buddy, an analytical framework that just clicks itself together as I write, and literature reviews); and Thinking about Snow White as the engineering play, part 1 (shout out to the two other people going ham on Snow White as an allegory during the Our Skyy 2 madness - @chickenstrangers (here) and @letgomaggie (here))

July [3 metas]

Most popular (and favourite): Thinking about Pat, Pran, and pursuit (I think this was my first time articulating the idea of Pat and Pran's commitment to the bit, a concept which continues to circle in my head. This was also another collaboration with the wonderful @dudeyuri!)

August [7 metas]

Here comes Only Friends... and the GMMTV Kissing Multiverse project.

Most popular: GMMTV Kissing Multiverse updates 1, 2 and 3 (this is so much fun to track and analyze, and I've been really touched by everyone else's excitement for the project too); Various thoughts and musings on Only Friends and ephemerality (the Ephemerality Squad assembles!)

Favourite: Thinking about Boston: a study of episode 3 - I find Boston's mind a fascinating place to explore

September [8 metas]

Oh look! It's more Only Friends!

Most popular: Mansplain, Manipulate, Manwhore: Ray confronting Boston - once again, I love getting into Boston's head. This post was inspired by @wen-kexing-apologist's scene breakdowns, especially their Fight Night one

Favourite(s): The above, and also The Mundanity of Meanness

October [5 metas]

Most popular (and favourite): The first fist bump in Bad Buddy - oof. I've gotta come back to this idea sometime.

November [3 metas]

Most popular: The Latest Update to the Kissing Multiverse - the hotly anticipated post-Only Friends update to the kissing charts

Favourite: the kissing charts, and Thinking about Pat, Pran, and competition - again, I love to think about Pat and Pran. I consider this one to be part of an ongoing series, along with my earlier metas on pursuit and the rooftop.

December [1 meta]

Most popular (and favourite): Not Me and earrings - technically an addition on @chickenstrangers' post, but was a relief to get my months old "Not Me is about ears and earrings!" thoughts out.

some no pressure tags: @chickenstrangers, @distant-screaming, @dudeyuri, @neuroticbookworm, @slayerkitty, @telomeke, @twig-tea, @waitmyturtles

#bl wrapped #ranch thoughts #honestly all laid out this doesn't seem like a lot. I'm surprised by how much more I wrote in May and June!#fascinating how you - Shan and WKA - also didn't start your meta journeys until a couple of months into 2023

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ginaporterr · 1 year ago

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HIIII Y'ALL!!!!!!! this is honestly very insane to me but i recently hit 1k on here, so i just wanted to say thank you all for being here and joining me on this fun ride over the past two years since i made this blog. i feel like i've joined the hsmtmts/specifically rina fandom three separate ways/times and i've always been able to easily find my niche of people, which really speaks to how open and wonderful this community as a whole is. this third time around was no exception, this little subsection of some of the nicest, funniest, smartest, most talented, most supportive people ever means the world to me, so thank you all for following and partaking in all of the fun that was this rollercoaster of a show, and thank you for supporting my relentless content creation bc i am most definitely not stopping anytime soon skdjfks 😭 this milestone perfectly coincided with the show's ending since i hit it on the day of s4's release, so i thought it would be fun to celebrate both my little milestone & the ending of our beloved show (and our many major wins) with you all, the lovely people that have made this time with the show as wonderful as it was! this show, these characters, and you all hold a very special place in my heart, so. let's celebrate it all!!

like last time, this celebration will be split into two components; prompts & polls! i thought it would be fun to see the difference in top ships now that the second half of the show's been released (+ with a bigger voting pool), so we're running it back! to join in on the celebration, you can vote in the poll linked below and/or send in an ask with a prompt!!

RULES — mbf this blog — send in a prompt (or multiple) from below — vote in the top ships poll

PROMPTS — ❄️ : song association! send in one of your favorite songs and i'll make a gifset relating it to some aspect of the show — 🦋 : personalized sets! tell me what you like about hsmtmts / what it means to you (in as little or as much detail as you'd like) and i'll make something inspired by your message — 🌀 : requests! send in a character/dynamic/episode/etc. + color/quote/song/motif/etc. that you'd like a gifset of — 🪁 : make me choose! send in two (or more) characters/episodes/dynamics/scenes/etc. & i’ll choose between them for a gifset — 💙 : surprise! for mutuals only <3 (reminder that i follow from milesgmorales)

and one last thing, i want to especially say thank you to some of my mutuals, old and new, that have made being here one of my favorite experiences <3 you all genuinely brighten up my dash, my tag, my blog, the show tag, the ao3 tag, everything with your thoughts and creations and talent and humor and i'm so very grateful to you all bc these past few years would not have been the same without you (especially those of you that were around for the s2/post-s2 rina dark ages KSJDKFH) forever grateful to this fun little disney show for bringing so many wonderful people into my life <3 LOVE YOU ALL MWAH

@ginaricky @laylakeating @homemade-ghosts @chuckclayton @richiebowen @saythewylie @aamirmitchell @pinkhysteria @mjsparkour @bakerolivia @spookys @blues-valentine @ginasporter @starrrbakerrr @emiraee @squishymar @rickybowsn @mariasyko @frostluvrs @ginaluvr @narcobarbies @usersojo @tabithatate @kitherondale @mike-el @userguts @kayascodelorio @yellowlaboratory @bartowskis

don't feel obligated to participate or rb ksdjkfs

#what's the surprise who knows not me #is it a gifset? is it something else? stay tuned to find out #(probably gonna be a gifset KDSJDFH)#i hope the butterfly emoji prompt makes sense #and that i can actually deliver 😭#hsmtmtsedit #hsmtmts #ricky bowen #gina porter #maddox #ashlyn caswell #kourtney greene #jet #rina #madlyn #jetney #gp1k #hoping i didn't forget anybody bc i will feel terrible but. if we are mutuals just know i love you dearly sdjfjksf <3 #ignore the bits of text that won't stay small bc the new post editor sucks

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clotpolesonly · 5 months ago

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i haven't seen anyone else talking about this so i guess i have to do it. i was gonna make a gifset (or 2, or 5) but i'm out of storage on my laptop and photoshop keeps crashing, sooooo a meta post it is!!

tvTRC is paralleling Helen Gansey and Kavinsky

now, there are a plethora of critiques to be made about the handling of Helen Gansey in this adaptation, first and foremost being the fact that she's pretty much unrecognizable compared to her book counterpart.

(also on the list: the buckwild stupid decision to turn aglionby co-ed, as if it being an all-boys school wasn't relevant to any of the gender politics already present in the books; aging her down JUST so that Blue had a girl character to interact with that she wasn't related to instead of expanding the female cast; the Ganseys being latinx + Helen's promiscuity meaning that she now falls into the hypersexualized spicy latina stereotype.)

BUT i'm going to set all that aside for now and focus on specifically tvTRC's Helen as, essentially, a new character within her context. and what's being done with her is actually pretty interesting.

so first we need to talk about Helen/Blue.

as WILD as it is for the show to have swerved away from Blue having kept to herself and not engaged romantically or sexually with anyone for fear of, ya know, killing them with her true love curse, it was an even wilder choice for them to choose Helen Gansey for Blue's only pre-canon entanglement. both just because that's her endgame love interest's SISTER, and also because she's a woman.

one of Blue's most prominent arcs in this season is about her recognizing and coming to terms with her bisexuality. so for her to have already had sex with a woman pre-canon introduces a whooooole host of repression and denial in Blue that she apparently only begins to process in herself when she starts playing voyeur to Adam on his bisexual identity crisis arc through her and Gansey.

i'm circling back around to Kavinsky, i promise.

let me draw your attention to a bit of dialogue that i'm SHOCKED i haven't seen talked about more because it's actually so huge:

Helen: "Hey, Queenie." Blue: "Helen! I didn't expect you to be here." Helen: "Well, here I am. Do I get a kiss hello? For old time's sake?" Blue: "I thought you weren't coming to these parties anymore. You said you were going to stop." Helen: "I said I couldn't be seen at parties anymore." Blue: "I'm seeing you." Helen: "Thought that didn't count." Blue: "You're drunk."

most people seem to have interpreted this as just flirtation, not something to take seriously, but Blue does not correct Helen! several times in conversation with others, we see Blue set the record straight, she's consistently very firm on not letting people get away with accusing her of shit she didn't do, even in jest. if Helen was exaggerating, Blue would have said so, but instead she skirts past this without any acknowledgement at all. imo that's as good as confirmation that Blue and Helen did kiss during their pre-canon tryst(s), and with no indication of other relationships i am left to assume that this was likely Blue's first kiss.

Blue, who is cursed to kill her true love with a kiss, chose to take the risk of kissing someone anyway, and that someone was a girl. a girl who, according to Helen, didn't count.

considering it takes nearly 8 episodes for Blue to come to terms with her sexuality and acknowledge, both to Adam and to herself, that she is bisexual, what this amounts to is a scenario in which Blue, closeted and repressed, convinced herself that Helen was a safe person to experiment with because, as a ""straight"" girl, Blue did not have to worry about falling in love with her.

as many closeted queer kids do, Blue found a way to rationalize away her attraction to Helen and convince herself that it "didn't count" and she was only doing it for XYZ reason and it didn't mean anything. she just wanted to kiss someone because she couldn't kiss who she REALLY wanted to kiss (boys, obviously) and Helen was conveniently there and willing to be experimented with, no strings attached.

only, in this exchange and in others in later episodes, we kinda get the feeling that there were some strings attached for Helen. there's an undeniable bitterness to the delivery of "thought that didn't count" and she's clearly stung when Blue deflects and points out her intoxication.

for Blue, their relationship may have been a pure friends-with-benefits kind of thing, but Helen is clearly more invested. her eyes are always on Blue, she's leaning in towards her, she spends half the party alternately flirting with Blue and being uncharacteristically snide. she likes Blue, and Blue, for all intents and purposes, used her and then dropped her to go back to playing at being straight.

do you see where i'm going with this now? do you see the parallel??

what other character do we know that 1) is openly queer, 2) has a persistent crush on a closeted main character, 3) develops some kind of homoerotic relationship with that character, and 4) is then spurned by that character who refuses to admit that they're queer?

Joseph motherfucking Kavinsky

Ronan and Kavinsky don't outright sleep together in the literal sense, but the show is JUST as obvious as the books are in the whole This Activity Is Gay Sex Without Being Gay Sex department, if not more so.

Kavinsky pursues Ronan, openly flirts with him (he also asks Ronan for a kiss hello, ep 5, and is ignored instead of denied), is both jealous of and spiteful about Ronan's relationships with Gansey and Adam, and is genuinely upset when Ronan finally outright rejects him and elects to go back to being Gansey's "friend".

Ronan, like Blue does with Helen, uses Kavinsky to explore a part of himself that he's not ready to fully acknowledge or accept. and both of them do this without any real regard for the feelings of the person they're fucking around with. Ronan is more of a shithead about it, which makes sense because Kavinsky is so much more abrasive and their entire relationship is a toxic clusterfuck in both directions, whereas Blue and Helen maintain at least a loose friendship in the aftermath of their encounter

but it's clear that Blue and Ronan have both been callous and selfish, and it's Helen and Kavinsky who end up with their hearts (such as they are) broken. this much of their story is a very close mirror and we see it in the visual framing too! (hence the gifsets i was gonna make, come on photoshop, work with me here adklfjgh)

the primary color palette used for Kavinsky's scenes is a rather lurid neon purple and green, and Helen's dorm room is done up in lilac and sage (same colors, just different saturation). Helen is the only character besides Kavinsky or his cronies to be seen on screen with drug paraphernalia (Gansey never finds out about her casual use, i hope there's an arc about it and the respective ways they're cracking under the pressure in season 2 😭 Blue and Ronan both know, though). there are multiple dialogue parallels like the asking for a kiss bit ^^ and we even get perfectly paralleled shots of Helen/Blue and Kavinsky/Ronan in the same episode!!!

this is so clearly a deliberate choice, they put WORK into setting up these shots so they would hit just the same!! they put Helen in fucking sunglasses (raybans, of course), like K is always wearing, to symbolize that she's hiding something!!! cinnamon topography, lemme tell you

anyway, there's another thing that i want to address, cuz Helen and Kavinsky's similarities aren't actually confined to their queer relationships, and this is something that i reeeaaally find interesting.

we didn't get much of anything about Helen's actual personality in the books aside from her being a good big sister to Gansey, which i loved don't get me wrong, but it's really great to get to examine the other ways in which the pressure of being A Gansey™ presents itself. we get plenty about how much Gansey-boy struggles with being constantly on display as an object within the panopticon that is the political landscape and the social scene of the wealthy elite. there's sooooo much pressure that comes with upholding the family's good name and image.

in Gansey, this stress manifests in epic levels of repression, dissociative episodes, panic attacks, and The Ever-Growing Hole Inside Him. he is, as we know from the books but hasn't quiiiite been really delved into yet on screen (it will come, i'm sure, it gets more obvious as the books go on), passively suicidal as well. he does not take the kind of precautions he should in his situation and is content (for a given value) to let himself simply die if that's how the chips fall. he's not gonna stop them. in most areas, he comes across reasonable and deliberate in his actions, but when it comes to his own life, he is shockingly cavalier and careless.

and then we have Helen. as the eldest Gansey child, she faces just as much pressure as Gansey if not more so (there's something to be unpacked in the gender politics of this royalty-coded family, but that's for another post), and we see her cope in a number of unhealthy ways (ways that Gansey himself is not privy to). on the surface, like her brother, she is always prepared to put forth a pretty polished sophisticated facade, because that is what's expected and required of her. she needs to be Presentable™ and anything that isn't gets kicked under the rug where the neighbors and the paps can't see it. but she's also a party girl, she has a substance abuse problem, she is implied to have a lot of sex with a lot of people, and she struggles to form healthy relationships.

there's another bit of dialogue that's relevant here and ties us back into the Kavinsky parallel:

Gansey: "You can't play with Adam's feelings like this, Helen, and not just because he's my friend. Because it's a shitty thing to do to someone. This isn't a game." Helen: "Life is a game, little brother. Just because you haven't learned how to play it yet doesn't make it any less true."

they were brought up in a deeply performative society full of backstabbing and politics, where relationships of all kinds were used primarily for social climbing and clout. add on top of that the pressure to stay pretty for the cameras, which translated to a very low tolerance for messy emotions or displays of vulnerability (see: Gansey removing himself from the fucking country because his post traumatic episodes were embarrassing for the family), and Helen has adopted a very removed and nihilistic worldview.

Gansey, popular as he is, isn't exactly a social butterfly -- he's always kept mostly to himself -- but Helen tried to make friends as a kid, she talks about it some in ep 3. none of the relationships in her life have lasted so she's stopped trying to form new ones.

life is a game. nothing and no one truly matters. you don't have to feel that way, you don't have to let anything hurt you, and you don't have to risk investing in other people when they're only going to turn on you in the end.

compare this to Kavinsky's last words:

Ronan: "Get down! Damn it, K, get down!" Kavinsky: "The world's a nightmare, baby. All the world's a nightmare."

Kavinsky too has retreated from viewing the world as something he can participate in genuinely. he's got the same kind of nihilism underpinning his whole tough guy act, and it stems from a similar place of damage. we see from his fixation on Ronan that he does crave a real connection, but he can't bring himself to be vulnerable enough to actually make it. all he knows how to do is posture and manipulate from a distance while he keeps his walls up to protect himself from being hurt any further.

to Kavinsky, everything is a dream and reality is what he makes it. to Helen, everything is a game and she can win if she plays her hand right. the only thing that matters is being in control because that is how they feel powerful and being powerful is how they feel safe.

the only difference is that Kavinsky takes this a step further by imposing his control on other people, which is a line Helen never crosses. we can attribute this to Helen having some genuine connections in her life. Kavinsky's life really is a nightmare lol, he was truly alone and on his own from a very early age, while Helen has a family that, while deeply flawed, loves and does its dysfunctional best to support her when it can.

my last discussion point here is circling back to the suicidality. the nightmare quote from Kavinsky ^^ is from his very last scene. it's the last thing he says before he allows his own night horror to kill him. in the wake of Ronan's rejection, with that last chance for connection denied and having no other reason to live, he commits suicide.

now, obviously, Helen does not do this. she lives on to grace our screens for season 2! but there's a moment in the final episode between her and Blue that needs addressing. it's the scene after Blue acknowledges out loud, both to Adam and to herself, that she is bisexual. she's spent the whole season wrestling with her identity and coming to terms with what it means to her and she's finally come to a place where she can say it and mean it and know it's true.

and then she sees Helen again. Helen, whom Blue kissed under the false repression-fueled assumption that she could not fall in love with because she was straight and not attracted to women. it was supposed to be safe in its impossibility. it was supposed to mean nothing.

but Blue is attracted to women. she is not straight and she could have loved Helen. there was nothing safe about this, and we get to really see on Blue's face that she's processing the gamble she took with Helen's life (i'm not blaming Blue for not realizing she was queer sooner, for the record, just acknowledging the guilt that Blue canonically feels in this rather unique circumstance of hers).

we see Helen process it too, but Helen doesn't react in the way that Blue (or the audience, probably) expects her to. she's not upset or retroactively scared or angry at the risk Blue took with her. instead we get this:

Helen: "So it was me, then?" Blue: "What do you mean?" Helen: "You said kissing would kill your true love, and here I am, alive and all. You thought it was because I'm a girl. But it's not. You just...didn't love me." Blue: "Helen." Helen: "It's okay. I didn't really expect you to. That's not what we were. [Pause.] Was there ever a chance?" Blue: "A chance for what?" Helen: "That it might take me out. [Laughs.]" Blue: "I'm really glad it didn't."

Helen asks this question jokingly, like it's no big deal, like it's something funny and a little scandalous. but it's not funny and Blue doesn't laugh. the audience isn't invited to laugh. this is a lonely girl with a lot of damage joking about her own death, wondering if it might have been worth it if it meant that Blue could've loved her.

we really need to give props to the actress because she infused the questions with so much fragile hope and vulnerability with just an edge of defensive posturing to cover it up. on some level, Helen wants Blue to tell her that she might've died. there's romance in that idea, of dying for love, of being loved to death. when she asks if Blue has found her real love, there's jealousy in it.

(i'm not prepared for when she finds out it's her little brother. it's gonna break me, i can already tell.)

but it's such an interesting juxtaposition with Kavinsky's end to the season. Kavinsky welcomed death because there was no love for him, and we have Helen almost longing for death if it could mean that there was love for her. instead, she has to keep living. she makes the choice that Kavinsky doesn't, to move on from rejection and look somewhere else in hopes of finding something more to live for. her apologizing to Adam is a step off the path to destruction, an acknowledgement that life is not, in fact, a game and that she can't win anything until she opens the door to all those messy unpleasant feelings again and begins to really heal.

i don't think it's any coincidence that the last shot we get of Helen is of her removing her purple nail polish and repainting her nails yellow -- the color most strongly associated with Gansey, her brother, the strongest and most genuine relationship that she has in the show.

Kavinsky had no one, but Helen at least has him. and in the end, that makes all the difference in the world.

thanks for coming to my ted talk.

#TRC goncharov #unreality #somehow this ended up almost EXACTLY as long as my Declan hair essay alkdfjgh #literally it's a 5 word difference #how #anyway i think i qualify as truly unhinged now #but if y'all didn't want me taking your crack seriously then you should've thought of that before you started canonizing interesting shit

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