#i had a red and darker blue highlighter. however i just chose to use what i already had out instead lol

[shooks-stupid-stuff]

him again (this time actually from today)

[jamilelucato]

Satisfied [F. W.]

Summary: y/N Bilmes is the daughter of the owner of the Zonko’s Joke Shop, Bilton Bilmes, and, in her sister’s wedding day, she remembers a night with Fred Weasley when she learned she would never be satisfied.

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Bilmes!reader (platonic)

Musical Hogwarts Series || Harry Potter Masterlist

A/N: it’s angsty because this song is angst! But I hope you all like it! It has an open end, where you can interpret it as you see fit. PS: gif is not mine so I have no idea if that’s really James (Fred) or Oliver lol. PS 2: Bilton Bilmes is the guy who works at Zonko’s when you play the app Hogwarts Mystery and my quick research told me that Bilmes might be the owner now, who knows.

Based on the song Satisfied from the musical Hamilton (no need to like the song to read/understand the fic!)

“Alright, alright. That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Now, everyone, give it up for the maid of honour: y/N Bilmes!” 

Lee Jordan’s voice echoed through the ballroom, accompanied by clapping. You stood up, wiping your hands on the skirt of the blue dress, chosen by your sister.

It was a beautiful model, with a slightly rounded skirt. The blue subtly highlighted your skin tone, but it certainly wouldn’t have been the colour you would’ve chosen.

Taking your wand out of your pocket, you marched to the small arranged stage and subtly cleared your throat.

“A toast to the groom!” you exclaimed, as soon as you chose a place to stand. You were in front of your sister, who had one of the most beautiful smiles on her face. You were avoiding looking at the groom, though.

The crowd of guests — your sister could not limit herself to inviting only the most intimate — echoed your words, raising her glasses of champagne. “To the groom!”

“To the bride!” you continued.

“To the bride!” mimicked the crowd.

“From your sister, who is always by your side,” you allowed yourself to smile while keeping your eyes fixed on your sister. “To your union!”

“To the revolution!” added some guests.

You shook your head, pretending not to mind the interruption of the guests.

“And the hope that you provide!” unconsciously, you brought the tip of your wand closer to your neck and the sensation was uncomfortable, but you kept smiling.

It was a beautiful scene, after all. 

Your youngest and only sister was getting married. And she was a beautiful bride...

“May you always...” you couldn’t avoid the groom any longer, “...be satisfied.”

The groom you were avoiding looking at was none other than Fred Weasley. And he was the love of your life. But the love of his life, unfortunately, was your sister.

He was beautiful that night. He had combed his red hair back and was probably using hair gel. His black suit clutched in the right places, enhancing the muscles earned in puberty.

In that light of the ballroom, his appearance reminded you of a night not long before this one...

You remember that night, and you just might regret that night for the rest of your days. You remember those soldier boys, believing they were the kings of the world just because they battled in the Battle Of Hogwarts. They were tripping over themselves to win the praise of the girls.

Hogwarts had been just reconstructed, but it looked as beautiful as ever. Generally, you and your sister avoided attending these types of social gala events, but as your own father said: the occasion was worth it.

The new Great Hall was decorated with dreamlike candles, like a dream that you can’t quite place.

You could have been distracted by the setting for hours and hours. Of course, that would have been if Fred Weasley hadn’t come in the front door as if he owned the space.

Fred, I’ll never forget the first time I saw your face, you thought.

Since that night, you have never been the same. He had intelligent eyes in a hunger-pang frame. He was saying hi to everyone, smiling brightly. Apparently, everyone knew who he was. You weren’t familiar with him, however.

When he walked towards you and said “Hi,” you forgot your social manners. It was rather embarrassing.

He chuckled at your blushed cheeks. 

You weren’t used to talking to guys, but he had set your heart aflame, every part.

“Dance with me,” he asked, noticing the songs had changed.

Hesitantly, it took you a second to regain your courage and accept the hand he held out to you. The band played a song with an unromantic but slow-paced lyrics, so several other couples were clinging to each other on the improvised dance floor.

Fred was a gentleman, holding you close to him, but with an impressive delicacy. You didn’t have much experience with men, but you knew from your friends’ stories in France that they could be quite inconvenient.

The dress you were wearing was a red a shade darker than the boy’s hair, which made it look like you two matched even more. He wore a two-piece suit with an orange shirt, but the suit was slightly greenish.

He didn’t try any risky dance moves, he just swung you from side to side, and you were grateful for that. He had a worse effect on you than drinking a whole bottle of alcohol, and if he tried a more difficult dance than that, you were sure it would be shameful.

“You strike me as a woman who has never been satisfied,” he whispered, close to your left ear.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. You forget yourself,” his commented made you feel offended for a split second, so you leaned away from Fred a bit.

“You’re like me,” he said, in sweeter tone.“I’m never satisfied”

He was trying to show you that being satisfied was not a bad thing. It meant you always wanted more. And he could be right about that.

“Is that right?” you tried to sound as charming as you could, using all of the flirting tactics that your Beauxbatons friends taught you.

“I have never been satisfied,” he sighed, not in a tired way, but in an enchanting way like he was playing the same game as you.

The song, unfortunately, was over and the band drastically changed the tune to something more agitated. Some couples left the dance floor, but you and the red-haired boy stayed there, only letting go of each other but remaining very close.

You decided it was time to present yourself. “My name is y/N Bilmes.”

“Fred Weasley,” he informed smirking. 

“Weasley?” you repeated. The name seemed familiar.

“Yeah, but don’t let it fool you. There are a million things I haven’t done, but just you wait,” he shrugged, nervously, and offered to get yourselves a drink which you accepted.

While he was gone, somethings started to click in your mind. Your eyes wandered the room, looking for your sister. Would she like to know that you finally found someone at your level?

Fred made you feel the feeling of freedom, of seein’ the light in just a couple of minutes, perhaps a bit more. Every word said was in total agreement; he seemed to know more about you than you did yourself.

But then, you asked about his family, and his answer wasn’t promising. His hands started fidgeting, he looked askance — but his words were just trying to distract you. An attempt of making you forget who the Weasleys were, but with him away from you, the information appeared. The Weasleys were penniless, and a big, huge family.

But he is so handsome! Yeah, there was a peach fuzz that he can’t even grow, but somehow, that didn’t erase his charm. You wanted him. You desired him.

Maybe he could be yours, at least for the night. Your French friends did it all the time... Sure, you were bound to catch feelings, but he could catch them too, right?

Then you turned and saw your sister’s face, and she was helpless. She was following Fred with her eyes, and you needed no more signs of how she was feeling. Probably because you were feeling the same.

You realized three fundamental truths at the exact same time…

Fred came to you, giving you the second drink in his hands, but you barely grabbed before reaching for his arm and making him walk.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked after sipping his drink.

“I’m about to change your life,” you forced yourself to smile when he stared at you.

“Then, by all means, lead the way,” he smiled back.

The first thing you realized: You were a girl in a world in which your job was to marry rich. Not that your father would be mad if you didn’t, but the family had a significant debt that no one knew about, and it was you the one suppose to pay it.

You were the oldest and the wittiest, and the gossip in the Wizarding World was insidious, and Fred was penniless. As a Weasley, anyway, he had to be very much poor...

Perhaps he was rising... Wasn’t he one of the owners of that Joke Shop in Diagon Alley that your father was bothered about?

Ha! That doesn’t mean I want him any less, you thought.

You had approached your sister, who exchanged looks from you to the handsome boy. You raised your brows and tilted your head, wanting to say: present yourself.

She gulped before offering him her hand. “Elizabeth Bilmes. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Fred handed you his glass as he grabbed her hand with both of his.

“Bilmes?”

“My sister,” you explained, but he still seemed confused.

��No, it’s just... the name sounds familiar.”

“Oh! Our father owns the Zonkos’s Joke Shop!” exclaimed Eliza, happy to help. “Perhaps you know him.”

Fred turned his face to you. “Why didn’t you mention?” he asked, but he wasn’t mad — he was excited.

There was the second thing you realized:

He’s after you because you’re a Bilmes heir, which would elevate his status— you’d have to be naïve to set that aside.

Maybe that is why you introduce him to Eliza, and, now, that’s his bride.

Nice going, y/N, he was right — you will never be satisfied.

Eliza was smart enough to continue the conversation while you were spacing out. “Thank you for all your service.”

It was well-known that the Weasleys played a significant part in the Battle, primarily because they were Harry Potter’s family.

“If it takes fighting a war for us to meet, it will have been worth it,” Fred kissed her hand, but he kept his eyes on hers.

You were about to roll your eyes or vomit — which one was going to happen first you had no idea— so you decided it was time to leave.

“I’ll leave you to it.”

They didn’t even look back at you, so you just turned and walked away. With both Fred’s and your drinks on hand, you drank them fastly, not even caring for the bad taste it left in your mouth.

You couldn’t look back; you couldn’t let your mind wander about the likelihood that your sister and Fred were already kissing.

Eliza has always been more proficient with boys than you, even though she was shy and humbled, her face called attention, and it didn’t take long for a brave boy to court her. Even more different from you, she always accepted.

The third thing you realized that night:

You knew your sister like you know your own mind — you will never find anyone as trusting or as kind. If you told her that you love him, she’d be silently resigned — he’d be yours.

She would say, “I’m fine”, but she’d be lying.

You walked directly towards the bar, getting yourself a couple more drinks. You would need it.

Your father bumped into you, asking what was wrong, but he would never understand. He just couldn’t.

Maybe your mom would, but at the moment, she was back in Paris.

But when you fantasize at night, it’s Fred’s eyes, as you romanticize what might have been if you hadn’t sized him up so quickly.

At least your dear Eliza’s his wife; at least you keep his eyes in your life…

But you knew, as you watched their relationship grow — as you were obliged to listen to your sister ramble to you how gorgeous and romantic Fred was — you knew he would never be satisfied. But so wouldn’t you.

Shaking your head for a what felt like a full minute you were finally able to look way from Fred and so finally able to lock the memory of that night forever in your mind.

Putting the wand back in the dress pocked, you walked down the stage towards the couple’s table, and you let a tear go down. Eliza would think you were moved by the wedding; only you would know the truth.

You could hear claps, but you didn’t care.

“I’ll always be by your side,” you whispered to your sister as you hugged her tight. She cried too, but she was way more emotional than you.

You knew who you had to hug after her.

And he was already up waiting.

“May you always be satisfied,” you whispered to Fred as you hugged him, letting yourself breath his perfume guiltless.

You felt him gulp to your words, but he said nothing and pressed his hands on your waist harder than before.

The door of the ballroom was abruptly open, and every face in the place turned to see who it was. Fred let go of you and smiled when he noticed who was walking.

Eliza seemed to be smiling too, and she rushed to the door, following her groom.

“Who’s that?” you asked the lovely woman sitting down closer to you, but she was also so happy that you thought she wasn’t going to answer.

“Fred’s brother,” she explained to your surprise.

You looked at her table where already five of Fred’s siblings were sat.

“Another?”

The pretty red-haired girl answered after giggling.

“That one is his twin,” she said while you both — and all the guests — watched the touching hug Fred shared with the man walking in. “He left just after the war; he was so traumatized with almost dying and almost losing Fred.”

“He wanted to calm down alone,” added one of the red-haired boys who was seating next to the girl.

“Harry did the same, so the whole family understood George’s point,” finished the girl.

You stared back at Eliza, Fred and Fred’s twin. Eliza did mention Fred had a brother just like him, but you thought she meant like someone with similar personalities, not the same face.

The three walked towards the family table, and all of the red-hairs got up.

“Oh, Georgie!” gasped the elder woman before hugging the tall man.

He hugged everyone, even your parents and he stopped next to you.

Eliza made the introductions.

“George, this is y/N, my sister,” Eliza said, putting a hand on your shoulder while you offered your hand to the man.

George looked down at your hand, but completely ignored and pulled you in a hug, that made you gasp in surprise. He had a tight embrace.

“We’re family now, y/N. Get used to hugs,” he muttered before letting you go.

You smiled, sympathetic. He was as beautiful as his twin, but somehow his eyes were... better.

“She’s like my own twin,” continued Eliza to George who chuckled at the comment. “Sure, we don‘t look alike. But she’s everything to me.”

“Thanks, sis. You’re all to me too.”

The twins laughed at your exchange of love with your sister, and you two pretended to be angry. Then your father asked for the floor, and the whole moment was interrupted.

Someone got George a chair right next to yours, so you were both facing your father, and he kept thanking the boys for buying the Zonko’s and restoring it.

“I knew my best costumers would be my bosses one day,” he said, and the whole place laughed.

It was George who requested to talk after, and he made such a cute speech that even you were moved. It seemed that George was the emotional one from the twins, much like Eliza was the emotional one from you and her.

“And I’m sorry I came a little late,” George continued just before ending. “Forgot the address I had to Apparate.”

As expected, he finished making everyone laugh.

The night went on better than you imagined. There was a moment there when your French friends made you embarrassed, then it was your parents’ opportunity to make you ashamed, but after a couple of drinkings, you were laughing at their dance moves.

All the Weasleys were marvellous, and all of Fred’s brothers danced with you, even the married one — even though the dance you two shared was much more to make everyone laugh at your moderns moves than anything else.

You knew Fleur, his wife, from back at school, so you two talked for a couple of minutes about the time at Beauxbatons.

And you also danced with George, who was a fun guy with a beautiful smile. He talked about his time away from home — how much about himself he learned, like how different from his twin he was.

“But at the end of the day, I missed him more than anything,” he had said, and you could only imagine how hurt that boy must have been to feel like leaving all his friends and family behind.

You laid your head on his shoulder while he moved around you, and the music slowed down. He realized that you were breathing hard.

“What’s it?’ asked George whispering.

“My sister,” you said simply. That was all you could tell.

Your sister was still beautiful, even after sweating on the dance floor, and now she was tied to Fred, just as you clung to George. They suddenly turned, and you looked at Fred, who smiled sadly in your direction.

“She’ll be happy as his bride,” you said to George, taking your head off his shoulder and looking him in the eye.

George seemed to agree, but he said nothing.

“And she’ll be satisfied.”

He then tilted his head, firming his hand on your waist.

“What about you?”

“Huh?” you frowned, confused.

“Are you satisfied?”

You took one last look at Fred over his twin’s shoulder before facing George again. And what seemed unlikely, happened — you smiled, this time, truly happy.

“I’ll never be satisfied.”

[lovesickallovermybed]

GIF Making/Sharpening/Colouring Tutorial

hi all! i’ve been asked many times to talk about how i sharpen and colour my gifs so today i will be doing a step by step tutorial on how i do

what you need: 

photoshop (i use a constantly updating one)

a video of some kind

space in your computer

difficulty: medium 

before:

after:

step one: download a video that is 720p-1080p

this is a fairly simple step, however, DO NOT DOWNLOAD IN 4K. what this tends to do is make the frames longer and blurrier whenever you’re attempting to sharpen them than they actually are. i usually pull videos from youtube or use quicktime to screen record videos. there are also lots of resources for videos that are kept on google drive.

step two: in photoshop, go to file - import - import frames to layers

to import frames to layers, you want to have a .mp4/.mov of some kind. i prefer the quality of mp4 over mov because it tends to create better spacing between frames, but mov still looks good!

step three: in import frames to layers, pick the relative part you want to gif.

only pick the first gif you want to make. a lot of times photoshop will run slower on older computers due to the processors within the computer. if you stick to only giffing one at a time, your computer won’t slow down as much.

step four: create the frames, but don’t select “limit to every __ frames”

many people do this and will limit to every 2 frames. while this used to be needed because of tumblr only allowing a 1mb limit back in the day, the limit on gif size has increased to 10mb. the chances of you making a gif that is 10mb is pretty small unless it is large with a lot of frames. if you’re wondering why your gifs aren’t as smooth, it’s usually because you are limiting frames.

step five: make all of your frames .03/.05 sec long 

usually at this step after creating the frames they will come out to be .04secs or .02secs long. if you save a gif at this level it’ll look too fast. instead go to the far right of the timeline and select the three lined box, in this box you will see an option that says “select all frames.” after pressing it all of the frames will be selected and you can go to where it says .02/.04 and change that time. click “other...”, then type in .03/.05. you can chose to change this at your discretion and personal taste. this is just what i NORMALLY do.

step six: now you want to crop and resize your gif as well as remove frames

these are the different proportions that i usually use:

for large full-width: 540x270

for 8 gif edits: 270x152

for longer looking full-width: 540x230

for full body: 270x330 or 270x300

for headers: 700x374

to crop, select the crop tool and get rid of any black edges or any part you don’t want of the image. then go to edit - image size. either do 540px or 270px and adjust the canvas size afterward based on if you had to input the width or the height to get the start of the proportion you want. this is also where you can test your gif to see if the frames are too many and can delete whatever you don’t want.

step seven: creating a timeline 

now that you have the start of your gif, you would think we would move onto colouring, wrong. now we have to make your framed gif into a timeline one instead. in the animation toolbar there is a button next to where it says “forever” and you will click this button to convert the animation to timeline.

step eight: sharpening the gif

okay now this is where it gets a little trickier. what you want to do is go to the top and pick select - select all frames after this all of the frames will be reselected. then click filter, convert for smart filters. this will make your animation all into one single layered smart object. 

after creating this smart object go back into edit and select smart sharpen. the settings i use are pictured below but i will also list them out here: amount: 500%, radius: 0.4px, reduce noise: 50%, shadows and highlights: fade amount: 0, tonal width: 50%, radius: 1px

now, click onto the layer you just sharpened. then right click and select duplicate layer. the shortcut for this is command+j. add a guassian blur to the object of 1px. then, make the layer 22-33% opacity. what this does is blur how sharp the effect is to make it seem more natural and clear.

step nine: colouring

now that the gif is sharp, we can actually colour it. whenever i colour the first thing i do is make a selective colour layer. within this layer you want to go to neutrals first. change these settings based on how you want the environment and colours to look. less black makes the scene lighter, more makes it darker. also go to the white and black categories within the selective layer. i tend to put the black at nearly 100% depending on how dark the scene is, (if it is lighter i usually don’t want to darken it too much), because what this does is keep the noise out from the darker areas of the gif. i almost always also always put white and -100% black to get rid of any black that might be within the white parts of the gif to take the noise out.

after this, i always add a curve layer to brighten and harden the gif. i then add another selective colour gif and adjust according to what just makes the gif look sharper/more colourful. obviously settings are going to be different for everyone, but i almost always use these at the beginning for a good base gif. after this selective colour layer in this scene i added a levels layer and defined more of where i wanted the light to go and the darkness/neutral light shifts. next i added a colour balance layer and changed midtones/highlights/shadows to sort of warm up the gif as well as make certain colours more defined. i then placed a vibrance layer to let the colours other than black and white stand out more. after this i added in another selective colour layer and i used this to brighten the cyan of the dress as well as change some of the red and yellow in the skin to make it darker and more defined. for some reason there was a hue of a blue shadow around the dirt and i wanted it to be black so i went to hue/saturation and changed the blues to being 100% black instead of blue so that the shadow would look darker.

finally, as with any of my gifs, i added an exposure layer the settings for this layer are in its screenshot below. very rarely do i ever change from these settings but you can play around with them as you please

step ten: saving the gif

i was asked many times how i save my gifs and the settings i use so here is how. to save, go to file - export - save for web (legacy). (it may take a moment for your gif to be ready to save but don’t worry this is normal.)

make sure that within the save for web you have perceptual and diffusion selected for how you save your gif. at the bottom you also want to have bicubic sharper as the quality of the gif. as long as your settings look like mine, you’re good to save!

step eleven: you may or may not need this step

occasionally, photoshop will play a trick where even though you saved your frames as .05secs it changes them automatically to .07secs per frame instead. to check this, reopen your gif, convert it to a frame animation, then look to see. you can easily just change the .07 back to a .05 and save for web again right after then replace the slower gif with the faster one

and thus we have:

[jyunshiim]

𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬; 𝙨𝙤 𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙩 *✬★*’☽* ✬ ⤷𝘒𝘪𝘩𝘺𝘶𝘯 𝘹 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘶 | 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 2

Genre → romance | angst | friends to acquaintances | friends to lovers | college!au |

Contains → fluff | angst |

Listen to →  Compass & imagination

Word count → 5198

TW →

Chapters → | Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 | 

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮 →

Eventually, you had to depart from Kihyun which broke your heart since you felt rejoice whenever you hung out with him. It reminded you of summer when you, Kihyun and Changkyun used to spend your warm evenings on rooftops and empty fields near lakes, your head on Kihyun’s lap and Changkyun whining to lay on his lap instead. The playful fights between you and Changkyun when you argued who’d be the first to hug Kihyun after your lively evening together. It was nostalgic to think about whilst you waved Kihyun goodbye, his skin gleaming as the sun inched closer to the horizon. His hand intensely gripped at the handle, his unoccupied hand waving you goodbye as the bus jolted again driving to the next stops. Kihyun sighed and looked out of the window again hoping you’d run after the bus waving at him but something did change and you stopped doing it. There was a shift. He shook his head in disbelief and chose to ignore whatever he heard, he just wanted to go home. The vehicle remained stationary and Kihyun looked at the stop he was at and luckily he arrived to the right one so he released his grip from the handle and gripped his bag strap instead and vacated the bus swiftly and stood under the shelter whilst observing the grey, dismal sky. “you must be joking,” he sighs just as the grey clouds become darker and seem to be saturated by rain. He looks in his bag for anything to shelter himself with although there was nothing so he had no other choice but to run to his home which was an additional 3 minute walk. He bolts down the streets as the rain begins to plummet down to the cool concrete. Kihyun looks around and sees a couple under a jacket running under the shelter on the other of the road. He ignores them, he doesn’t have time to think about that right now. Finally, he arrives at the metal gates guarding his front door which he pushes open and runs towards his front door.

He frantically takes off his shoes, tripping over his family’s footwear, staggering into his living room. “Kihyun, you’re soaking! Come here!” his concerned grabs a clean towel and ruffles Kihyun’s hair dry; “you must be so cold! Luckily I made some soup today.” She pats his back.  Kihyun couldn’t help but smile at his mother being so compassionate. He smiles and thanks her before going into his bedroom, unbuttoning his wet shirt and leaving them on the floor. He stared at his ceiling; he felt so.. empty? Maybe because he was hungry again but regardless, he grabbed his phone and the blue light beamed onto his face. There were a few messages from you and some messages on the group chat between you and Changkyun.

You: hey! Are you home yet? If you are, do you wanna play later? :]

You: Also isn’t it your friend Hyungwon’s birthday soon?

You: Kihyunnn

Kihyun replies to your messages;

Kihyun: yeah I just got home and it was pouring out there and yeah it is very soon how did you even remember that?

Kihyun: Uhh also for being online, [he thinks for a moment] maybe, my mother wants a family dinner.

You: plssss :< I miss playing with you <3

Kihyun sighs as the pair of you exchange some text messages before Kihyun had to go and have dinner with his family. You sit back in your chair a chamomile and ginger candle lit at your desk next to the bunny plushie Kihyun gave you, the flame dancing the music softly playing through the speakers. You had to study since you have been throwing it off for a while, so your pens and highlighters were scattered across your desk. Your puppy sits near your desk; “did you miss me today?” you pet Lucas before going back to your textbook. You realised prom was also a couple months away and you were thinking to ask Changkyun to be your date to prom, maybe you should ask Kihyun what you should do or maybe even Irene. Sudden fluttering intruded your stomach and you looked at yourself in the mirror diagonal to you and catch yourself smiling. You couldn’t help it. You check to see if anyone is online and of course, none other than Changkyun is in the waiting lobby for a game. Impulsively, you grab your headphones and join the game;

“well well well, look who it is again,” Changkyun’s voice sounded cheerful even through a pair of headphones, “Are you stalking me Dumpling.” He laughs since he knew you hated that nickname but he liked to hear your reaction. “Stop calling me that!” you pleaded. “are you pleading? Are you acting like your little puppy now hmm?” he mocks you. “Oh my god Kyun, shut up and start the game.” You sigh; you felt your heart palpitate slightly, the nervous butterflies swarming your stomach. A few minutes pass by, round after round, the pair of you sharing wins. “ where’s Kihyun?” Changkyun asks. “oh, well he said he was having dinner with his family, did not not message back?” You look at your phone the time stamp reading  READ 6:45pm. “He read the message, maybe he’s studying?” Changkyun suggests “maybe I should do that too,” you lean into your chair again, groaning at the workload for school since it was inching closer to your final exams, “maybe we should have a study group!” your exclamation startling Changkyun on the other end. “Hey, we did have one but someone decided they didn’t wanna come,” Changkyun sighs; “yeah that was you, Kyun…” you remind him making him chuckle. “ah yes, of course it was but maybe we should prioritise it now…”

Kihyun was sat with his mother in the living room, his head on his mother’s lap as she gently caressed his hair. Kihyun felt calm. He looked at his phone.

You: what do you think of study group again at Lucky’s Coffee? Like the old days!

You: it’d be good to share ideas and stuff like we did during study period at school!

Kihyun: yeah, that sounds cool :)

That emoticon felt strange

Kihyun went online for a little while to notice the ‘active 45 minutes ago’; a pit fell in his stomach, but it was fine, he wanted to play to relieve some stress. He gripped his controller and leaned back into his leather seat spending the rest of his night alone, playing something. His phone was flashing blue, notifications flooding his screen, which he didn’t see until it finally stopped. After a long session of gaming, Kihyun got bored and sat against his headboard and unlocked his phone and it was none other than you. You were asking to go to karaoke on the weekend with Changkyun and Irene, asking questions about the study group and also a question that stood out the most to him; how do I tell Changkyun how I feel? Kihyun didn’t even know himself so it was hard to give that advice and it was even harder when he had feelings for you, his best friend. He replied to all the messages before laying his head down and facing the wall, the sudden warmth of his sheets embracing him, his body sinking into his mattress as he drifted off very quickly.

The following morning was dismal and rainy. The 6 am clouds loomed over the city, hitting against the window to your room. You woke up to your dog at your feet and your lamp still lit from the night before however not only that, so was your computer on the loading screen. You were waiting for Kihyun but you feel asleep as your body hit the mattress. You read the replies from Kihyun as you roll out of bed and slip your feet into your slippers and stumble tiresomely through the door to the bathroom although your brother was taking his time for the last 20 minutes. “Hurry up,” you groan as you crouch outside the door, your phone sitting at the crease of your hand. You text Kihyun; “Good Morning, wanna grab some breakfast with me today?” you send with a smiley emoji. As Kihyun is drying his hair with a black towel, he grabs his phone off the desk and reads your message, pressing your name and opening the chat log.

“Yeah sure. Where do you wanna go or what do you want to eat?” he replies back. Kihyun puts the phone back onto the desk and finishes getting ready. He decided to wear his white shirt and cream coloured v neck vest that had blue and red strips at neck. He buttoned his cuffs and slipped on his maroon blazer, grabs his bag and heads for the door. It was ten minutes to 8 and Kihyun was on his way to get the bus to get to your house. “No breakfast today?” His mother asks as she sets breakfast for the rest of the family out. “oh um- I promised a friend I would get breakfast with them” he smiles nervously before shoving his feet into his shoes and dashing through the door catching the bus on time. He unlocks his phone and replies to you; “yeah, any café sounds go, I’ll be there soon.” He locks his phone and puts it into his pocket. Luckily today he came prepared and took an umbrella just in case.

You tap some lip tint on your lips, smearing it around with your finger, putting it back into your pouch and back into your bag. You spritz here and there your new fragrance and smile to yourself contently. You see Kihyun outside and you run to meet him outside; “the bus came quick today!” you sounded extremely cheerful today. “yeah, less traffic I guess, I don’t really know,” Kihyun nervously laughs. You and Kihyun walk to the nearest café around the corner and sit at the bar stool seats the look outside; Kihyun gets 2 steaming cups of coffee and two chocolate croissants. “wow, we haven’t met up before school in so long,” you sigh as you sip your piping hot coffee although you hiss at the hot liquid burning your tongue. Kihyun’s jumps and asks if you’re okay and passes you his water bottle to cool the tongue down. “no no, I’m fine thank you,” you take a napkin and pat your bottom lip. “is that a new lip tint you’re wearing?” he asks noticing a new shade. “yeah! I didn’t expect you to notice.” Of course, you wouldn’t, why would I be looking at your lips in the first place?

“look who it is,” Changkyun smiles and drapes his arm around Kihyun “bro, is your phone alright?” he takes it out of Kihyun’s blazer pocket. “nope seems fine to me, why haven’t you been replying to us?” He looks at Kihyun concerned as they walk to class together. “I’ve just been busy with my family, nothing much really plus I felt a bit ill yesterday because of the rain.” He nodded to himself. “ohh fair enough, don’t die on us like that bro,” he squeezes his arm. “how did little puppy get so good at video games?” Changkyun pulls you close to him. Your heart skips a beat and your cheeks flush a pinkish hue. Kihyun notices and his hands bury in his pockets and he clears his throat; “doesn’t her lip tint look nice on her?” he asks Changkyun, Changkyun turning his head with a smile to inspect your new lip tint. “wow, it does look nice on her, can I have some too?” he smirks knowing that it has an affect on you. You nervously laugh, “um no, it was expensive okay?” you scoff jokily. “how about the tint on your lips hm?” he squeezes you from your side. He did not just say that – Kihyun thought. “We can hang out after school if you want?” Kihyun suggests to you, and only you. “Not inviting me are we? I need to get a new moisturiser; can you help me?” He looks at you starry eyed. You nod at him, your cheeks aching from smiling so much; “Well, coffee is on me then I guess?” he pulls you and Kihyun in.

Period 1 – Business studies. It was a class that dragged on for hours yet you somehow loved to learn about different strategies and using statistics. You flip you pen between your fingers, your knee bobbing under the table as you tracked the time on the clock above the teachers desk. 25 minutes to go. You glance out side the glass window of the door and you see Changkyun waving at you, pointing towards the cafeteria – that was his way of saying there all in there today- you tilt your head and he makes his way. “um, ma’am what seems to be so interesting outside that you cant focus on your statistics?” your teacher taps her fingers on her desk. She was intimidating. “oh um no Miss, I just got distracted” you clear your throat. “hm okay,” she looks back at her computer. The bell finally rings and you were dismissed to break; you see your friends and Irene at the table today. “hey! Changkyun and Kihyun got you a drink and a snack, someone seems to be popular,” Irene nudges and whispers into your ear; “so which one will you pick,” she smiles smugly “ what do you mean, they’re my best friends?” you whisper back to her. She sighs and shakes her head, “text me later alright?” you nod in affirmation and look down at the table to see a strawberry smoothie drink and a gimbap triangle on the table. “thanks guys,” you smile at them. Kihyun leans back in his chair next to you and scrolls down his Instagram feed. “you’re awfully quiet today?” you prod his arm. “Yeah, just a bit tired today,” he croaks, “nothing much to be honest.” Jooheon was in your study period today accompanying you since the other three were in their classes. He was working on his music and was working hard to getting the highest grades to get a scholarship to go abroad for his degree course. “psst, hey,” he leans over the table to get your attention. “hm?” your response was instant since he never usually spoke in study periods, “have you noticed Kihyun acting strange lately?” he pouts thinking, “He said he’s been studying a lot so that’s what I assumed, why?” you stop writing and question him. “oh… nothing he just seemed abnormal but if that’s it then I guess now I know,” he smiles “how is university applications going?” Jooheon seemed intrigued. “Well, I got my place into Seoul University and all my other ones too but I’m definitely picking Seoul!” You respond to him certain you’ll go to Seoul. “cool, cool, I’m planning to go abroad to be honest, have you told the others about your acceptances?” he asks and you shake your head. “We promised to keep it until prom.” You nod. “Ruthless, how could you keep it for that long, I’d be so happy to spread the news!” Jooheon’s jaw drops at how good your secrecy skills were, “well, we wanna surprise each other you know?” Jooheon nods, understanding your point.

The basketball court was empty but that’s where you waited for the boys. You take your mirror and your lip tint, dabbing it onto your lips and smearing it with your finger; you reach into your bag for a tissue. “Hey there Dumpling, tissue?” he hands one from his packet. “What the fuck? Where you just watching me?” you elbow him. “watching you put that lip tint on that you said I can’t try? Yeah, I’m jealous you can be just as pretty as me!” His laughter immerses your heart in admiration. “wow, you’re so cocky!” you punch him. Kihyun wonders over, his plaid jacket over his shoulder; he strides over and greets the pair of you. “Hello, Lovebirds,” he glances at Changkyun and then you, “waiting for me? Let’s go.” He walks ahead. “Lovebirds? That’s new, do you see me and Little Dumpling together?” Changkyun shoots a playful look at Kihyun and you. “why would you say that Kihyun?” you fiddle with your fingers, a nervous pit falls in your stomach. Kihyun grabs your hand, “well maybe we should be lovebirds then?” he tried to let his playful side arise. “WOW! Kihyun, do you like her?” his eyes scan his expressions but all Kihyun gave was a side smile, “that was a quick assumption Kyun, jealous because I’m holding her hand?” The atmosphere was tense and almost too tense for you so you changed the subject. “there’s a corndog stall just before the mall we could have some of that or just go to a cheap little restaurant, I really want jjajangmyeon!”

At the shopping complex the three of you went to, you were looking at new jewellery and makeup for prom – especially the more pinky red tones. “This one would look good on you,” Kihyun picked a scarlet red lip tint and handing it to you to try. You already had some on so you turn to Changkyun, who was asking earlier to apply some for some reason, and beckon him over. “lemme try this on you, I already have some on,” you unscrew the lid and move closer to Changkyun. You could feel your heart beat out of your chest and your throat go dry. You elevate yourself, standing on the tip of your toes to apply the tint to his already pink lips although he lowers himself down for you, his eyes that captured the starry night, gazing back at you like you were the stars. “Do my lips look kissable yet?” his husky voice was low, it made you melt on the spot. It was to no surprise he’d say something along those lines – although lately he has been making remarks like this more frequently- but it caught you off guard. “h-huh, what?” you gulp. “Lips, kiss kiss” he moves closer and Kihyun returns to see what was happening and he clears his throat. “Just kidding, do you like the colour though,” Changkyun stands back straight and looks at Kihyun and back at you. “come on then let’s get this, you both must be hungry yall acting weird as hell.” He grabs a box of the shade you tried on him and heads to the tills.

“was he going to kiss you? Did I interrupt or something?” Kihyun asks, his heart aching ever so slightly. “n-no, that wasn’t my intention I didn’t know he’d do that!” you defend yourself. “did he make you feel uncomfortable, I’ll tell him to not make your uncomfortable just let me know and I’ll-” Kihyun was cut off by you; “no, he didn’t don’t worry. He’s not a creep for sure it’s just my feelings making me nervous but thanks for watching out for me.”

The evening went by quickly. The three of you enjoying your time together as much as you couldn’t until the evening came to an end and the departure began. You took the bus home with Kihyun again, his forehead pressed against the cool window pane and his bag between his arms. “are you asking Irene to prom?” you ask Kihyun, his head whipping to you like a deer seeing head lights for the first time. “why? Why do you ask, are we not going together?” his voice sounded upset, almost similar to sounding heartbroken. “oh no, I just thought you guys should because I wanted to ask Kyun to be my date, is that okay?” you sound like you were asking for permission but you didn’t want to sound condescending or rude by just stating it as a fact ‘I’m going to prom with Kyun, you go with Irene’ that’s wrong. “oh um I’ll just go with the boys and Irene then,” he nods and looks away to the busy evening streets. “oh my, really!” the excitement and relief floods your system, “you’re the best Kihyun, I love you so much!”

You love me the wrong way…

School was different now. You and Changkyun have very frequent flirtatious encounters and conversations and everyone began to catch on. Yet, Changkyun didn’t make a move yet. After school, specifically your evening classes you asked Changkyun to wait for you so you could walk home together or grab a coffee, to which he didn’t deny to. After making one last trip to your locker the locker is slammed in front of you making you jump. “KYUN! You scared me fuck sake,” you open it again to get your phone out. You both walk out, talking about whatever you usually talk about until you stop. “Changkyun…” you voice softens and you reach for his arm but he takes your hands into his and just holds it. You gulp before proceeding what you were going to tell him; “Firstly um.. I wanted to say that I-”

“I have feelings for you…”

“…I have feelings for you.”

You stop and nervously gulp and trying to not lose composure, your hands gripping his harder. You couldn’t believe your eyes or ears, did he really say it back? “Hey, don’t freak out but I thought it was obvious enough that I liked you?” he chuckles “who would’ve thought you’d return the feelings.” His hand rests on the back of your neck and you felt your cheeks burn like they were set alight. Your lips quiver nervously; his lips softly left a dainty kiss on your cheek and nothing more. “I wanted to ask if you’d be my date to prom? Is that what you wanted to ask me?” He smiles ever so purely. You nod. “well, today is your lucky day then!” He pulls you in for a hug. What the fuck just happened? He kindly walks you home and your mother sees him; “Changkyun, long time no see, come in!” she invites him in. “Oh thank you but I have to get home to help my little brother but maybe another time.” Your mother frowned. She saw Kihyun as a son but she had a strong liking towards Changkyun since you started high school.

School was different since the day Changkyun confessed to you. You weren’t expecting it at all but there you were, in an empty corner of the study room, with Changkyun next to you and Kihyun sitting opposite you. Whilst you were guiding your eyes across your page with your pen until Changkyun’s hand rested on yours on the table. Your instinctively moved your hand but you looked up at the distraught face as if he made you uncomfortable on accident. He mouthed, “I’m sorry” before turning back to his textbook, one hand resting in his lap; your hand glides over to his under the table and the hairs on Kihyun’s neck rose. He looked up to see you stare lovingly at Changkyun. It shouldn’t have bothered him so much, but it did. You gently pulled his hand closer to you and intertwined your fingers with his. He smiled at you, his hand burying in his free hand although when a teacher walked towards the table, you let go. She was searching for Jooheon; “is he not in today?” Kihyun asks. “no, this isn’t like Jooheon, I’ll ask for someone to phone home,” she stared you and Changkyun down. “work hard Changkyun.” Her voice was stern. Jooheon was actually performing today and no one but Kihyun knew. “He’s performing? Where?” you ask Kihyun. He answers your question before quietly going back to studying and checking his wristwatch.

Changkyun’s name flashes up on your phone and a smile is drawn across your face. You grab your phone and sit on your bed and tap at the screen to reply at the message. He asked when he could you and that Kihyun told him that he’d meet you both there. You sighed, you felt bad for leaving Kihyun out like that although you did try to get him a date – Irene – but it didn’t work out sadly.

A few weeks later…

Prom was surreal. The aura felt surreal. You sat at your dressing table and you twist the lid of the lip tint you bought with Kihyun and Changkyun and tapped it onto your lips and your apply some glitter to your eyes. You add a few more curls to your hair with your flat iron and spirts your perfume and turn around to look at yourself in the full length mirror. As you admire yourself, you hear someone at your door and a knock following it. “Hey Dumpling, it’s 7pm and I’m here to take you away,” he smiles looking down, standing up straight before walking closer to you. “I got this for you,” he pulls out a pink rose from behind him and hands it to you, his hands locking fingers with you. “first of all, that sounded so scary,” you laugh as you push him, palm on his chest but he hold your hand there. “wouldn’t our first dance be like this?” his arm wraps around your waist before your mother walked in and ruined the moment. “you should catch a taxi now by the way,” he points to the door “oh and don’t forget an umbrella!”

You didn’t think an umbrella was necessary so you didn’t take one but you and Changkyun sat at the back on the taxi. You were texting Kihyun;

You: hey! We’re on our way now. Are you there yet?

Kihyun: not yet, I’m waiting for Jooheon but he’s fixing his tie and we’ll leave. See you there

Kihyun hadn’t seen you yet and he knew for a fact it’d be like seeing something so heavenly for the first time. Not long after, everyone was together. The music, the lights, the crowds of people celebrating their final time together all in one room. You saw Kihyun holding a small bouquet of flowers until her saw you walk in hand in hand with Changkyun. Everything went grey and cold and his finger tips numb. He didn’t know what to do with the flowers, so he disappeared into the sea of people and returned, empty handed. You wave at Kihyun and the others and coverse with them until Changkyun and Kihyun went to get; Kihyun started a conversation with Changkyun.

“do you you really like her or is it a one time thing?” Kihyun asked, his tone bitter and dry.

“yea, I would believe so… I do like her?” Changkyun replies back “why do you sound… upset? Were you both a thing?” he questions as he stops what he was doing and turns around, “Is that what this is all about Kihyun?” Changkyun catches on quick.

“did you tell her you’re moving to the states or are you gonna hurt her by telling her last minute?” Kihyun bit down on his teeth hard, inhaling sharply.

“I- I haven’t but I’m sure she’ll understand right, she isn’t one to throw a fit Kihyun,” he puts a hand on his shoulder “It’ll be fine..” Changkyun smiles.

No, that wasn’t the point! Why can’t you get the message!

“I like her Changkyun and you knew I did but you go and confess you like her too?” Kihyun bites his lip drawing a little blood. “but she expressed her deep admiration for me, what else could I do? Break her poor heart?” There was an immediate silence. “Alright, this is in your hands…” Kihyun’s voice was harsh. Changkyun had never seen Kihyun so upset and hurt about something before after their years of friendship… hopefully this wouldn’t break the bond.

After a few hours, near the end of the night, the special event was taking place. King and Queen. “they do this in the states, I’ve seen it in movies-“ Jooheon jumps in excitement. “you’re too excited for this-“ you nudge him “let me be excited!” he smiles. Everyone goes quiet and mutters to each other who they think the winners would be. The girls who tried to get Kihyun’s attention waved at him from a far; “they definitely voted for you,” you scoff “why do you sound so disgusted, am I not worthy of prom king?” his gaze was strong, intimidating almost until he realised and smile to soften the mood. “Well Kihyun of course you are but those girls are trouble…” but during the conversation you were having with Kihyun you both missed the winners. You and Kihyun. As cliché as it sounds, you and Kihyun won. Everyone’s eyes were on you and Kihyun and you could see Changkyun at the back clapping for you, his eyes full of love and a hint of pain. You both received your prizes and from then on everything began to spiral…

“Since we didn’t tell each other where we’re going, let’s say it now in 3… 2...” you count down but you were interrupted by Changkyun. “I’m moving to the states for the rest of my studies.” He blurts out and gulps nervously hoping you wouldn’t think much of it. “w-what-” the smile drops and your face pales. “I’m mo-” he repeats but you stop him. “don’t tell me again, I heard…” you stare at him, eyes pooling. Has your heard already been broken? “why did you confess to me then?” Your dainty voice cracks. “because I wanted to and I knew you were going to do the same but-”

Everything sounded like it was underwater. You heard a faint ‘I’m sorry’ from him. You couldn’t hate him for moving that far, you couldn’t take that distance. Kihyun’s arm wraps around you and you immediately bury your head into his chest. Of course your childhood friend would always be there. “hey, don’t cry it’ll ruin your makeup” Kihyun tries to comfort you. Jooheon and Irene exchange awkward looks; “umm hey Irene should we umm go home?” Jooheon suggests, Irene fake yawns, “Yeah I’m getting tired, see you guys exam week,” She pushes past Changkyun and Jooheon follows.

Changkyun regrets his decisions, he should’ve stayed quiet. You regret yours too. The relationship couldn’t go on but luckily there wasn’t a proper start either. “we can still talk and be friends and despite the fact I like you.. that wont change,” he begins and you look up, your lashes wet from tears, “but feelings change with distance Kyun… sure we can be friends but god..” you tried to console yourself and so did Kihyun. “I’m sorry, I-I don’t know what more I can do…” He gulps. “maybe we should just depart for tonight and let the energy calm down” Kihyun suggested, “I can take you home if you want? He asked you and you nodded. “You can join if you want,” he gave Changkyun the option but he shook his head and said he’ll go alone. Everything was messy and your feelings should’ve been concealed. At least Kihyun was there to comfort you.

And I always will be.

↩ Chapter 1 

↪ 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 3

[hunterartemis]

The Assistant: an addition

This post represents the current members of one of the Richest and Oldest French Pureblood family Valois. It took me two weeks to find the right kind of images and people (most of whom I don’t really know) to represent what was the perfect image of the Valois family

The Image at the very top is the family crest of the Valois, and in real life, it is actually the Crest of Valois, found on the tomb of Charles the Bold, the original founder of the Valois line.

The next one, “Tres haut, tres excellent, tres magnanime et tres puissant” is the official writing on the tapestry of the allied Valois-Bourbon line. It means “most high, most excellent, most magnanimous and most powerful”, it is the praise of the family, and only the High Nobles have.

Hrothgar Bartholomew Valois: I have chose an edited version of Timothy Omundson on this one. Hrothgar has dark eyes, Timothy Omundson had blue. In the panel next to him, is a Crown. The name ‘Hrothgar’ has been taken from the Angle Saxon Epic Beowulf, Where Hrothgar is a Danish King. The exact meaning is not known, but Hrothgar means “Spear”. His middle name “Bartholomew” means “Pirate King”. Pirates don’t care for morality or codes, they just plunder and conquer. I have placed the names of Legitimate and Non-Legitimate Kings side by side to highlight Hrothgar’s diplomatic nature that hold both ruthlessness and shrewdness together.

Marguerite Lucrezia Valois: “Marguerite” is the French version of “Margaret”. This figure, “Marguerite” is inspired from “Marguerite de Valois”, one of the earliest Queen Consort of the Valois dynasty.  The Name “Marguerite” means “pearls”, a very sought after object by European nobles, and an important symbol of Virginity and Purity, often worn by Elizabeth I the Virgin Queen of England. “Lucrezia” is an Italian name that means “wealthy”. Marguerite is from the family of Orleans, which in real life assumed the July Monarchy in France. So her name in total means “Wealthy in Pearls” or “Wealthy in Purity”. She is a reddish blond haired woman, with hazel eyes

Menelaus Cepheus Valois: the Eldest Valois son has the name of Mythical King of Troy, Menelaus. Menelaus means “Strength of the People”, the eldest Valois son is also named after a gracious King, like his father and his middle name “Cepheus” is a name of a Constellation, which also means “King”. I have picked Gabriel Aubry for this role. he has a darker blond hair.

Svetlana Arkyadevna Valois: The Elder Daughter-in-law of the Valois hails from the Russian nobility, Gruzinsky. In real life, the Gruzinsky are Georgian Nobility and Subject of Russia. Her name “Svetlana” means “Luminous” or “Light” in Russian, and I have been inspired from the Russian Ballerina ‘Svetlana Zakharova’. Her middle name “Arkyadevna” means    “daughter of Arkady”. It is a common tradition in Russia that a person’s middle name suggests whose son or daughter they are. Her middle name was inspired from Tolstoy’s heroine, ‘Anna Arkyadevna Karenina’. “Arkady” usually means “someone from Arcadia”. So the whole of her name means “Arcadian Light”, another Grecian inspired name, coinciding with her husband Menelaus. She has red hair and blue eyes. 

Magnus Cetus Valois: The Younger son of the Valois is named after the famous “Whale” constellation. ‘Magnus’ is Latin for “Great”. The literal translation of “Cetus” is Whale. It was coincidental that during both of the son’s birth the Constellations Cephus and Cetus were in the front line, so it was decided that their middle names would be after these stars. Magnus’ name keeps up with the mother. Whale is an oceanic creature and pearl is found in the ocean.

Elena Vittoria Valois: Magus’ wife, Elena Vittoria is from the Italian house of Orsini. In real life, the Orsini family existed in medieval times and Renaissance and produced a number of Popes to give to the Roman Empire. Therefor this Orsini too, is of old origin. ‘Elena’ means “blessed”, a common Italian name, and “Vittoria”, another common Italian name (Italian Version of ‘Victoria’) means “Victory” or the Goddess of Victory herself. Her name therefore means “blessed Victory”. She has platinum blonde hair, gray eyes and neurotic disposition. She is currently with child.

Maxine Adrienne Odessa Valois: The youngest child of Hrothgar Valois who possesses her father’s looks. She has three names, unlike her brothers. “Maxine”, a name that was chosen by her father (all of the sons were named by their mother) that means “Greatest” in Latin; “Adrienne” a name that means “dark”, was given because she was the first child of Hrothgar who was born with the same black hair like his. Her last name ‘Odessa’ was given in a whim, a name that is the female version of “Odysseus”, the famous Greek Traveler. Later in life, she traveled around the world, wandering about, in search of knowledge. I have chosen an edited version of Vittoria Ceretti, an Italian model. she came closest to my idea. I am aware that her hair does not totally match Maxine’s but it is to be remembered, Maxine’s hair is not curly, it is wavy. The roots are straight, but the length is not.

I have chosen to edit them B/W and not in colour or in that fashion of 1920′s to indicate how they are trapped in a mental state of 19th century and aristocratic supremacy. Maxine is in colour to depict how different she is from them.

I have put many quotes here, these are to showcase the values of the family, and to use them as aesthetics. These are the vows of the Valois Family

“bono malum superate, capax infiniti, faciam quodlibet quod necesse est   “ :  overcome evil with good, holding the infinite, I’ll do whatever it takes.

 “Compos mentis, concilio et labore, coniunctis viribus, Resurgam” :  in control of the mind,  by wisdom and effort,  with connected strength, I shall rise.

“Deus et mon droit, et it doit etre pre avec tous les mouyens“: The God and My Right, I will take it by any means.

The last quote is in French, and the part “Deus et Mon droit” is the true motto of the Valois. However, I have put this in French to echo the mindset and realness of Maxine.

Narum Ligno Domum: This is the motto of the Wizarding Pureblood family of the Valois. The quote means “the backbone of the dynasty is made of wood”. It is said that There were not one, but two men that established the Valois family. The Muggle one was established by Charles de Capet, Son of King Philip III and Isabella of Aragon, and his unknown brother Jean-Baptiste de Capet. In the medieval age, when Jean-Baptiste was born with magical blood his Royal parents kept him a secret. When Charles found the Valois house in 1284, Jean-Baptiste, now educated in Magical Arts, threatened to end him. To avoid conflict, bloodshed and exposition, both Charles and Jean-Baptiste signed a treaty that there will not be one, but two Valois branches, one non-wizard another wizard, and both will be bound to each other. The pact consisted-

1. If a non-magic child in born with magical blood, he/she would be the responsibility of the Wizarding Valois family and Vice Versa.

2. The Non-Wizard will protect the secrecy and existence of the Wizarding Valois family. 

3. In return, the Wizarding Valois family will protect the Valois-Capet Dynasty with magical means. This condition became null and void when the Muggle Valois family went extinct in 1589.

The motto literally meant that the Muggle Valois Dynasty is and has been protected by the wood (wand) of the Wizarding Valois.

[fire-bear]

Photo Ready

Rated T due to a swear word. Gil’s fault.

So the prompt for this one is Youth and I couldn't think of anything (except that I didn't want to do a kid fic) so I Googled the word and found two songs. The first one repeated a lot of its words but the second one had a line about a photo booth, so...

“I can’t believe he’s making us do this,” Arthur grumbled, arms folded.

“I mean,” Gilbert pointed out, “we don’t  need  to. But then we won’t be able to go to the party.”

Arthur sighed. “Does he really think we’re gonna pick out anything good without him, though?”

“He did say we needed to learn,” Gilbert told Arthur, amused. “Are we gonna go in or not?”

Scowling, Arthur turned his displeasure on Gilbert. “Why are you so calm about this? Franny basically told us that our clothing taste sucks. And I don’t see why.” He gestured at himself. Gilbert allowed himself a moment to let his eyes wander up and down Arthur’s body. As was typical for Arthur when he wasn’t at school, he was wearing ripped, skinny jeans and a Ramones t-shirt, both of which were black. Over the top of his t-shirt, was an old, worn leather jacket, mostly intact. His Doc Martens were lined with green highlights, though Gilbert was never sure whether he bought them that way or decorated them himself. Around his neck was a choker, little metal protrusions making it look as though someone had cut off some spikes at the base. To Gilbert, he looked cool. More than that, actually, but he refused to entertain those thoughts for any length of time.

“Hm. Might be ’cause he thinks we don’t fit in with his other friends?” Gilbert suggested.

Arthur raised an eyebrow and looked Gilbert up and down. Gilbert wondered what he thought of Gilbert’s dress sense. He wore skinny jeans as well, a dark blue. His t-shirt was a slightly darker shade of the same colour with the words  New Phone, Who Dis?  written in pink. A red shirt was over the top of it, a hole in the bottom left where he’d caught it on something months ago. He had opted for a pair of cheap Converses, red and high-topped. Was it too ‘dorky’ for Arthur’s tastes as well?

“His other friends should be trying to fit in with us,” Arthur said. “We’re  the ones who’re his best friends.”

Grinning, Gilbert nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Fran just wants to flirt with people and ignore us, probably.”

“Urgh.” Arthur looked up at the designer place Francis had noted down for them, hoping they would actually listen and buy some new, fashionable clothes. He sighed and turned back to Gilbert, pausing to send a glare at a couple of girls who seemed to be ogling them nearby. Once they’d scurried away, he returned his attention to Gilbert and said, “Do you even have enough money to shop here? I don’t think I do. And all the places Franny told us about are high-end.”

“Nah. My allowance doesn’t cover this.” Gilbert paused. “Uh, not after buying those games.”

With a snort, Arthur turned on his heel. “Of course you did.”

“Hey!” Gilbert hurried after him. “What did  you  spend  yours  on, huh?”

There was a pause as Arthur debated answering. However, Gilbert knew he would; he always did when he asked him a question. “Books,” said Arthur with a sigh. “None of which I’ve started reading as I had some on loan from the library.”

“Man, maybe we should’ve asked for an advance on next month’s allowances, huh?” said Gilbert.

“Nah,” said Arthur, gesturing ahead of them. “That shop’s cheaper. And, look, they’ve got a sale on.”

Gilbert stared at what was essentially a meagre step up from a second-hand clothes shop. He looked at Arthur and raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think that’ll work?” he asked. “Fran’ll probably be able to sniff out what’s designer and what’s not from a mile away.”

“As long as we make it look good, he can’t complain,” Arthur insisted.

“Fine,” said Gilbert, sighing. He also rolled his eyes for good measure and that was when he saw it. “Hey, look!” he cried, pointing across the walkway.

Tucked away in a corner, out of the way of all the numerous shoppers, was a photo booth. The little screen set into its side flickered through its explanation, showing off stock photos. Gilbert had only ever been in one for his passport photos and the one time he’d dragged his little brother in to pull faces at the camera. He always thought they were fun and had planned to drag all his friends in before they graduated next year. Seeing one now excited him and he grabbed Arthur’s arm to drag him over to it.

“A photo booth?” Arthur asked as they reached it. “What about it?”

“Let’s go in!” Gilbert said, excitedly. “We can take before and after photos!”

“Why not just do it on our phones?” said Arthur, looking at the sign which declared the price. “This costs money, you know.”

“Yeah, but…” said Gilbert slyly, smirking at Arthur. “If we have less money, then we can tell Fran we couldn’t afford much and then we might be able to wear what we were gonna wear.”

“Huh,” said Arthur, tilting his head. “That’s…”

“Clever?” Gilbert suggested, cheerfully. “Genius? Brilliant?”

“Smart… for  you,” Arthur replied, smirking.

Groaning, Gilbert pushed Arthur into the little box. “Urgh. Come on.”

They slid onto the little bench, Arthur seated beside the wall while Gilbert was nearest the curtain. He pulled it closed and turned to the monitor inside. Briefly, he glanced at Arthur. Raising an eyebrow, Arthur gazed back, nonplussed. Sighing heavily, Gilbert dug his wallet out of his back pocket and peered into its depths, searching for the right money.

“What were you planning on wearing, anyway?” Arthur asked as he shook out the coins stuck in the corners.

“Oh, uh, this shirt that says, ‘Party Time, Motherfuckers!’ but with an asterisk in place of the o and the u.”

“And you wonder why Franny doesn’t think your fashion sense is any good…”

“Oh, shut up!” Gilbert finally managed to pull out his money and leaned forward to wrestle it into the slot. “Besides, I figured he wouldn’t be around much to complain. You know he’s just gonna flirt with everyone till he finds someone who’ll flirt back. He won’t be paying attention to us.”

“You’re wrong,” Arthur said. He grinned at him when Gilbert looked up at him in surprise. “He’ll flirt until he can find someone to make out with in his room.”

Gilbert snorted. “Yeah, and everyone else’ll be making out in rooms, too.” He returned his attention to the money slot and finally inserted the note.

“Ah? Have you got anyone in mind for that, Gilly?”

“Nah,” Gilbert replied as he tapped at the screen, setting up the camera. “Depends on who turns up. D’ya wanna put dogs’ ears on?” Gilbert gestured at the example shown.

“No,” said Arthur, shortly. He scowled at Gilbert when he turned around to grin at him. “So does this mean I’m gonna end up alone at the party?”

He sounded so put out that Gilbert turned back to the screen to hide his blush. It really sounded as if Arthur had been looking forward to hanging out with Gilbert that night. Feeling bad, Gilbert chose the option for the camera to take five pictures one after the other. “I’d rather hang out with you, though,” Gilbert assured him.

“You’d rather hang out with me than make out with someone of your choice?”

“Well, yeah!” said Gilbert, squirming. He kept his head turned away but grinned, trying to inject cheer in his voice. “You’re way more fun than anyone else I know who’s going! What about you?”

There was a pause. “No… Wasn't planning on it.”

“Oh.” Gilbert let his finger hover over the ‘Ready’ button. “You ready?” he asked, quietly.

“Yeah.”

Quickly, Gilbert pressed it and leaned back. He settled on a normal smiling picture and left Arthur to his usual folded arms pose. Instead, he grinned widely and held up the peace sign, trying to decide on what they should do for the second picture. Something silly, like them using their fingers to make the other pull a face. Or they could turn around and moon the camera.

His thoughts were cut off when Arthur grabbed his arm. Surprised, Gilbert turned to him as he was pulled around. He didn’t have time to react to Arthur’s actions when he spotted Arthur’s free hand reaching out towards him. Gilbert’s eyes widened, confused and shocked, as Arthur cupped his cheek. Then, using the combination of his grip on Gilbert’s arm and the hand on Gilbert’s face, Arthur pulled him closer. He barely had time to register the way his heart skipped a beat as Arthur pressed their lips together in a kiss.

Off to the side, there was a click and a flash. Gilbert would have startled away from Arthur had Arthur not shifted closer, their knees knocking. At the same time, he moved his head, gently moving his lips against Gilbert’s. He responded instantly, kissing Arthur back just as fervently as Arthur kissed him. Arthur hummed against him and he let go of Gilbert’s arm to slide his hand around Gilbert’s back and pull him still closer. Willingly, Gilbert let him, tangling their legs together as he tried to move closer without getting up and breaking the kiss - he was too worried that it would all be over once he pulled away.

Instead, miraculously, Arthur deepened the kiss. His tongue swept over Gilbert’s lips and, with no hesitation, Gilbert parted them, craving Arthur’s tongue in his mouth. Arthur, of course, took the invitation, running his tongue over Gilbert’s teeth and the roof of his mouth before running it along Gilbert’s. The tasted of mint almost overwhelmed Gilbert. Unable to do anything but move his lips, encourage Arthur, Gilbert whimpered, wanting  more  somehow. Arthur responded by curling his tongue around Gilbert’s and coaxing him into using it.

Slowly, they began to push their tongues against each other’s, a back and forth as their tongues slipped between mouths. Arthur nipped at Gilbert’s tongue and outright bit at Gilbert’s bottom lip whenever he retreated. Gilbert gasped breathlessly and obediently kissed him again, their tongues twining once more. He moaned, unable to stop himself, feeling himself react in other places. His face felt hot but he couldn’t bring himself to move back from the heat of Arthur’s body. In fact, Gilbert wanted to touch  more , wanted to move closer, wanted to feel and see Arthur’s skin. It wasn’t the first time he had yearned for more contact from the other boy but now it was amped up, encouraging him to clutch at Arthur, pulling him across the bench and sliding his hands under Arthur’s leather jacket. Arthur let him, the thumb on Gilbert’s cheek gently brushing against his skin; occasionally, the pad of his thumb slid across the corner of Gilbert’s mouth and, instinctively, he licked at it. Both of them shuddered when that happened, pressing closer still.

Eventually, they needed to breathe and they pulled away, though Gilbert made sure to stay close. His panting breaths probably fanned out across Arthur’s lips. Unbidden, his eyes were drawn to them, redder now than before. Arthur licked them and Gilbert nearly dove in for another kiss. However, a motion in the corner of his eye made Gilbert glance towards the screen: his eyes widened as he realised that the photo booth had finished taking its pictures - and they’d been kissing for the entirety of it.

When he looked back at Arthur, he couldn’t regret it. Arthur’s face was flushed, though he didn’t look particularly fazed, as if they did this all the time. His lips looked shiny and red and, when he ran his tongue along them, Gilbert’s breath caught. He bit his lip and looked away, well aware that his entire face was hot. Even his ears were tingling and he was sure they were red, too.

“I- Ar- Tha-”

“Yes?” said Arthur, raising an eyebrow.

“I just…” Gilbert trailed off, not sure what he wanted to say or ask. Was this something on the spur of the moment or had Arthur been thinking about this for as long as Gilbert had? Should he make a confession now? What did Arthur want, a casual thing or something more? For a few moments, Gilbert couldn’t get any words out. Then, finally, he managed to say, “Is… Is this a one-time thing?”

Arthur tilted his head, a smirk forming. “I thought that, since you want to hang out with me at Franny’s party  and  you want someone to snog, I could be both.”

“Oh,” Gilbert said, faintly.

“We’d better get going,” Arthur added. “We'll need to buy something if we want to do an ‘after’ picture.”

Gilbert blinked. “You… You want to come back here?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, his smirk softening into a smile. “We can have fun here, with no-one staring at us.”

Delighted, Gilbert grinned. “We could just stay here and have fun instead of forcing ourselves to shop. If Fran won't let us in, we can go somewhere else that night.”

Still smiling, Arthur raised a hand to cup Gilbert’s face. Gilbert couldn’t help but lean into it, his eyes fluttering closed. A soft sigh slipped past his lips; he felt utterly at peace with the world, blissfully happy. He was expecting a kiss, maybe a chaste one, to begin with. Instead of on his lips, however, he felt something on his nose, a soft press of Arthur’s smooth skin on his as he pecked him there.

“No,” said Arthur and Gilbert was shoved away. His eyes flew wide as he tumbled from the photo booth, catching sight of Arthur’s amusement. The curtain dropped back down to shield Arthur as he sniggered while Gilbert pouted. But his heart was hammering and he knew that Arthur wouldn’t leave him high and dry later, not with the way Arthur was still blushing.

And then Arthur proceeded to bury his face in his hands and silently scream at himself for a whole minute before he exited, thinking things like, Oh, my God, I can't believe I just did that!!!

Also, they do go back for those 'after' pictures. They consist of them with different coloured tops (green for Arthur, red for Gilbert), lighter coloured jeans and sweatshirts tied round their waists - though you might not see that seeing as Arthur ends up straddling Gilbert as they kiss again. :D

[feral-flower-child]

The Tailor

Jeremiah was a quiet young man, one who knew the quality and value of silence. He enjoyed it, knew that too many people wasted their breaths. Plus it was an added bonus of his business that his customers didn't have to speak to him. A companionable silence is better than forced small talk. It's why his little suit shop stayed booming despite the tiny size of it and the seclusion. Well, the silence and his best customer. The tailor assumed that the silence is why the man came to him, it wouldn't make sense otherwise.

The customer in question looked…well he looked almost demonic. Grey skin and warring blue and red lights that would have made a splendid show on his walls had darkness not followed him in and given the shop a soft ringing noise. Jeremiah assumed that his customer actually toned down the ringing for him, though he didn't know if he did or could do it to the other effects the man had. However despite his demonic look the man didn't act demonic. Quite the opposite in fact, he was a gentleman. Any utterances from him were soft apologies and thanking Jeremiah for the suits, though usually he showed his thanks with a hefty sum of money much more than his suits were worth.

Speaking of the suits, they all turned monochromatic on him. Not to say that the customer chose drab black and white suits. No, he chose wonderful colors, the brightest ones in fact that often were overlooked by Jeremiah's other customers. Purples and greens and reds and blues. Just splendid, some of Jeremiah's best work, and the man chose them all. But every time he put them on, they'd bleed into grays and blacks. And not that Jeremiah could be called certified to figure out the emotions of a demon, but he could swear he'd see sadness and disappointment in the man's grey face as he realized another suit took on his monochromatic color. But the customer still bought every suit he tried and paid handsomely for them, so much that Jeremiah almost didn't need any of the other customers that came into his shop. Still, it bothered him that he couldn't provide a full service for the man.

It was at his home one cold and uneventful night having just laid down for sleep, that Jeremiah knew how to fix the demonic man's problem. He shot from his bed and immediately jumped to his work room and his spools of fabric, designs running through his head. This would be his masterpiece and it would be for /him/. How fitting.

Jeremiah didn't know how much time he had to work on it because the man didn't give warning before he came in and honestly Jeremiah thought he had earned that right. He definitely wouldn't argue with the demonic man about not scheduling appointments. But that meant that he could show up at any given moment and Jeremiah wanted this to be perfected before he came. So whenever Jeremiah wasn't working on his other few customers or sleeping, he was slaving over the suit for the man. And then the one suit turned into two suits. Jeremiah already had the man's measurements memorized from years of service and could easily craft them to fit him to perfection. He'd taken note of his preferred style of suit as well and made sure to incorporate that.

And then he worked and he worked. For hours, for days, for weeks. Sewing and cutting and measuring until at last, at last, they were all finished. Jeremiah hadn't eaten since god knows when, he hadn't showered in days, and he was pretty sure that humans weren't supposed to sway and shiver like this but holy shit he'd done it and he couldn't help that wide smile before he collapsed on his bed still covered in fabrics and measuring tapes. The next day would be hell as he dealt with the aftermath of him ignoring almost everything his body screamed at him to take care of before he dropped dead but that moment was too far off to care. Right then, he'd bask in his achievement before passing out.

The next day was indeed hell, and as was the next afterwards as Jeremiah caught up on orders and necessities of the shop and his own body. Then the next and the next after that and the next in a string like a pearls on a necklace as Jeremiah waited in anticipation of finally unveiling his masterpieces. Even if he didn't live alone, he wouldn't have shared the suits with anyone before their intended receiver if he'd only show up. Finally after eleven days of anticipation and antsy worrying and going over designs before reassuring himself that yes of course they'll work, the man showed up.

As usual when he walked in the room the shadows seemed to crawl a little closer and a slight ringing noise slithered into Jeremiah's ears but he was too excited to care. Before hurriedly giving him a gesture to wait a moment, he ran into his back office-slash-closet area to grab the two suits concealed in hanger coverings. When he came out, he couldn't help the smile but also the nagging worry of what if it didn't work? But he didn't let himself think about it further before thrusting the first of the concealed suits into the man's confused yet ready hands. His eyebrows were scrunched up as he unzipped the covering and then his breath caught in his throat as he gazed upon the first of Jeremiah's suits.

The man's grey fingers tentatively touched the almost glistening pure white fabric of the suit before he pulled it out of the covering all the way. Jeremiah drank in the man's awed expression, his own fears slowly dissipated except one. Quietly he said, "You should try it on."

The other man jumped a little as if he hadn't realized that Jeremiah was there. "I–You speak? I thought you were mute?" His voice crackled slightly at the edges, almost overlapped and echoed but it had a nice sound to it. Jeremiah shook it away.

"No not mute. I just like the quiet and I know the value of words. So I choose them well," he said after a careful moment. Then he nodded to the suit still in the man's hand and then to the one in his own. "You should try on the suit then I have an idea. We'll see if it works."

The man just nodded and went into the nearby changing room. While the man changed, Jeremiah hung the suit still in his hand on the other changing room door. In less than a minute he had come back out clad in the snow-white suit that made his grey skin look paler and his eyes and hair even darker. Jeremiah quickly looked over how it fit him and noted that the cut fit him perfectly. He smiled to himself at his own little memory victory. Then he rubbed his hands and beckoned the man out more into the room. "Alright. I don't know much about you. I don't even know your name–"

"It's Dark."

Jeremiah paused at the interruption. "What?"

"My name is Dark, or at least that's what most people call me. Though you wouldn't think it looking at me now," the man said with a half smile, his fingers fiddling with his cuff sleeves and his voice still slightly awed. He hadn't seen anything yet.

"Well that's a little on the nose wouldn't you think?" Jeremiah asked cheekily, but instead of letting Dark answer, he continued on with his original statement. "So now I know your name but I don't know much more about you besides you like suits and you pay really well for them. And–correct me if I'm wrong–you don't like having only monochromatic suits." Dark only nodded. "Cool so I'm right and this wasn't a waste of time and money. Well I may have found a solution. Wow that's more words than I've said in a lifetime."

"You're not done yet though. What's this solution?" The ringing got a little louder, just a little, not painful but almost as if it was just because Dark was excited and he couldn't control it. The lights around him did the same, the blue and the red glowed brighter.

Jeremiah smiled and sighed, running a hand through his blonde hair as he did so. This really was the most he'd said since he couldn't remember when. "Well I don't know what those lights around you are or where they come from, but from what I've been able to see they always go outwards. But, and this is a big but, if you could direct them at the suit they'd reflect off it and create color. Either color or both will work for the suit you're wearing."

Dark contemplated this, tilting his head and resting his hand on his chin. He stayed like that for a few moments, and it almost looked like he was having a conversation within himself. Jeremiah didn't think he'd be surprised if he was. Eventually, slowly, the cyan light turned in on itself and spread over the suit before being reflected from the fabric and out again. The white threads turned all shades of blue from a deep royal blue at the breast and thighs to a sky blue towards the cuffs of the sleeves and pants legs. Swirls and whorls appeared as the light passed over, almost seeming to move as the light continued to travel. Dark and even Jeremiah, who had made the damn thing, gasped at its beauty. Only the lapel and undershirt stayed brilliantly white against the ranging cerulean hues.

"I…I don't know what to say. This…is gorgeous," Dark breathed, his eyes trailing his arms and touching the rippling colored designs.

"Don't say anything. Try on the other suit," Jeremiah said while already pulling the second white suit from its covering. He didn't pause, didn't take his eyes from suit he was already wearing while he reluctantly let the blue lights fade and grabbed the suit before walking into the changing room again. Dark walked out quickly again and passed the first suit back to Jeremiah who set it aside on a chair. "You can also use any color on this suit, though I'd be interested to see the reds on this."

Dark only nodded and slowly, almost painstakingly compared to the blue light, the red light seeped into the suit with deep maroon and bright scarlet highlights. Instead of the swirls on the last suit, geometric lines and corners cut their way up and down the fabric, sometimes converging into shapes and sometimes zigzagging across each other. It looked almost chaotic but in a controlled and calculated way that made Jeremiah want to jump for joy if he wasn't captivated. Eventually he was able to snap out of it enough to make a coherent thought. "I would recommend wearing a black undershirt with this and…well shit that's what I forgot," Jeremiah cursed himself for forgetting something so important.

Dark snapped his head up, a loud cracking sound breaking from in his neck. Jeremiah winced for Dark who didn't seem to notice. "What could you possibly forget? What could you possibly do more than this?" Dark gestured to the suit that still rippled and seemed to crackle with raw energy.

Jeremiah just looked at him as if he was the most empty-headed man in the world. "A tie! In my rush to make suits I didn't make any ties ah I'm such an idiot."

Then Dark did the one thing Jeremiah didn't expect, he laughed. Uproariously and the red suit flared with him as his overlapping echoing laughter filled the room. When he calmed enough to speak again, Dark still had a smile on his face. "You already made me two wonderful suits, two masterpieces. I am still trying to figure out how to repay you. And you're worried about ties?"

"Well duh. And don't worry about repaying me. You always overpay me, this is simply me paying you in-return. Making it even. And you need ties, it can't be a suit otherwise. Alright I think that if I can just do this and maybe…" Jeremiah's words transitioned into incomprehensible mumbling as he paced through the room. He was startled out of his quiet frenzy by a heavy but gentle hand set on his shoulder.

He looked at the man, close enough that Jeremiah could tell that Dark's eyes weren't just black voids like he thought, but rather layers of dark grays with bleeding swimming highlights of red and blue brought out even more by the suit. "Listen," Dark said with a half smile still playing on his lips, "if it really bothers you that much then you can make me a few ties after I buy these. But they don't need to be done now. If you were doing the suits for payment, you over-payed me."

Jeremiah smirked. "Says the man who pays me three times what a suit is worth every time he visits."

"It seems we've reached a stalemate then Jeremiah," Dark said, finally moving his hand from Jeremiah's shoulder. The tailor just tilted his head a little and smiled.

"How about we talk about the stalemate next time you're in so that I can negotiate better. Speaking of which." Jeremiah turned to his front desk and grabbed a pen and a bright pink post-it note pad from it. While he walked over he jotted down his personal number rather than his store one as it will be easier to reach him that way. Then he handed the scrawled on post-it, pen, and the pad to Dark who immediately wrote down his own number. "Thanks," Jeremiah said when Dark handed back the note, pen, and pad. "This way you can send in orders for suits and actually tell me when you're showing up instead of barging in like you own the place."

Dark gave that trademark half-smile. "I wouldn't dream of it. I have to go, and I'd pay you for these but–"

"I'd refuse all payment and claim you were trying to bribe me. For what I haven't figured out yet but don't worry I will." Jeremiah shrugged, knowing that he had Dark beat. Apparently the man knew it too.

"You are a wily one Jeremiah." Dark nodded his head to the man and picked up the other suit as well as the suit covering, apparently content to leave his old suit in the changing room. Then he walked to the store exit with his red suit glowing in the darkness that always follows him, but before he strode all the way out, he turned to the man behind him and smiled softly, sincerely. "Thank you." Then he walked out and into the world with Jeremiah's masterpiece for all to see.

Jeremiah felt lighter than he ever had despite having spoken more than he had in forever.

~~~

That moment when you start to hardcore ship a one-time fic character with a canon character

Based on a headcanon I have and Eko expanded on about Dark having a tailor

@snowelfxx @slim-jims @bitten1ce @ironwoman359 @splatoon-jim @hamsterbrine @pleaseletthisjimbetaken @darkiplier-support-group

[theantibridezilla]

Subtle Fantasy Colors from Overtone!

I normally don’t cover haircare products on TAB mainly because I’m natural and the natural hair blogging community is fairly well saturated. However, today’s feature is about color and actually goes well with the Pantone Color of the Year Ultra Violet, that I’ve been highlighting. Now when it comes to color, I’m no novice. I’ve been coloring my hair (or extensions) since about 2007/2008. I’ve done standard drug store/beauty supply box dyes, I’ve done Wella, BAQ henna rinses on my natural hair and my preferred ones which I’ve been doing since about 2013 are actually color rinses rather than dyes. I’ll dig deeper on that in a bit (yes, this will be a bit of a long post) but let’s just say although I’m not a licensed beautician or anything, I understand the mechanics of dying hair. And long before fantasy colors were trending, I was dabbling in that world with navy, teal, dark green, fuchsia, and purple thanks to process friendly rinse (NOT dye) brands like Manic Panic and Creative Image Adore.

In the past two to three years, fantasy hair colors (i.e. pastels, gray, rainbow hair, etc) have trended across Instagram and in the mainstream beauty space. If you’re unfamiliar with dying hair and especially what it means to “lift” hair, here’s the crash course. It’s very easy and literally a one step process (typically) to go darker than your natural hair shade because you’re only depositing color - just add the dye or rinse to your hair and you’re done. It takes more work and processing to go lighter. If you want a clearly visible lighter hair color (i.e. pastels or vibrant bold hues) on your current dark hair, you need to bleach first (developer + bleach powder) to at least a strawberry or honey blonde shade and then deposit color. And depending on how much lighter you’re trying to go from your natural hair shade, you may need to use some pretty strong developer which comes ranging from 10 to 40 with 40 being the most intense lifting power. If you just want something subtle, you can deposit a dye or rinse and depending on your starting color you may end up with something visible under low light or under sunlight (depending on the strength of the rinse/dye).  

As a general rule, aside from when I used to apply BAQ henna to my hair and scalp when I was newly natural, I DO NOT color or do any kind of chemical processing to my natural hair. When I want to wear a new hair color, I turn to extensions and full lace wigs. And because I love to do an ombre from a natural-ish dark brown/brown-black shade into some form of fantasy color, it means that when rocking colorful wigs/extensions, I always have to first bleach using 20 developer to the ends and then deposit the color. I use a 20 developer because it lifts enough in one application for me to see visible results but I don’t have to be concerned about over processing. Why? Because if you’re buying extensions they’ve already been processed somehow unless you buy truly virgin hair - which tends not to be in typical African American textures. So, when I buy an Italian Yaki or Coarse Yaki unit in natural brown, there’s at least one texturizing process that’s already been applied. Bleaching it means at least a 2nd process and actual dye rather than a rinse would be a 3rd process. The more you process hair, the more you damage it and reduce the life of a unit. And if you’re doing a home color job, it’s best to be as gentle as possible to prevent over processing and damaging the hair (especially if it’s the hair growing out of your scalp).

I say all this to say, Overtone offered to send me samples of their hair color and after doing a bit of researching and learning that it was a rinse and not a dye, I was hyped to check them out. They sent me their Extreme Purple deep treatment and the Extreme Purple daily conditioner as well. The deep treatment is the rinse which will deposit the initial color and the daily conditioner basically acts as a touch up to condition while maintaining the color of the hair. They also sent me a tester amount of their rose gold deep treatment but I currently don’t have any units light enough for the color to even appear and I didn’t feel like bleaching anything. So, I’ve tabled that experiment for the moment. I actually did this color project right before NYE for NYE and my baby shower. But if you follow my on Tales of a Mommy 2 Be, or either of my IG accounts, you know that I’ve been rocking my natural hair almost exclusively for the last 2 months. So, this weekend I washed and conditioned the unit I colored using Overtone’s conditioner - and am now rocking the new look as you see above.

Now, one thing I really loved about Overtone’s FAQs is that they were very honest about what results you could expect to achieve. For instance, they make it clear that if you apply their rinse over previously colored hair (especially a fantasy color), you may not end up with the shade you purchased from them (i.e. adding red rinse over previously colored blue hair can get you purple). And they specifically noted that because it’s a depositing rinse and not a dye, if you’re brunette or darker, unless you bleach your hair prior to applying their colors, you may be left with a more subtle color. The reason I bring this up is because one, it’s important to manage expectations especially for hair color newbies. And two, there are other brands out here lying to people saying they can lift brunette and dark hair to super light fantasy colors without the use of bleach - and this just isn’t chemically possible. Looking at you Lime Crime with your Dark Unicorn dye.

Anywho, back to my experience. So, I have lots of wigs lying around and I opted to pull out an oldie but goodie to test the Overtone color. I chose an Italian Yaki wig I’ve had for about 3 years now and one where I originally bleached & dyed the ends using a teal shade from the Adore rinse line but that ended up depositing as this awesome forest green shade (see collage). I loved this color because I bought this wig for my trip to Seoul and Tokyo years ago and it was just an awesome unit! I even touched it up many times to keep that awesome green shade. But it was time for a change as the unit was now faded to bleach blonde ends, a sad looking greenish middle and the untouched natural brown roots. Now, because I was going to use a unit that had been previously colored, I already knew a few things:

Rich fantasy colors from Adore don’t fully rinse out no matter how hard you wash - even after washing the hair twice with Dawn dish soap (a beauty hack to strip color!).

Because they don’t fully rinse out, as vibrant as that purple hue from Overtone was, the likelihood that the end result would be that Extreme Purple was 50-50.

So, knowing these things, I was really open to seeing what would come of this project and I wasn’t going to be angry if the color wasn’t awesome. I applied color from the ends up to a little bit higher than where the green had been placed to ensure that the green would be completely covered. However, to hedge my bets, I did put the wig in a plastic bag and then left it in my cap blow dryer on high for about 20 - 30 minutes to help the color penetrate better. (Note: the blow dryer trick can work on anyone. If you’re dying your real hair, you can just cover with a plastic cap or bag and the heat off your head will help to make the color penetrate better).

What I Love About Overtone:

The Deep Treatment is actually really thick like a slightly goopy paste, making it easy to apply. The color sticks to where it needs to be and it’s not messy like when I usually use my Adore rinses which are very runny. I recommend using a tinting/color brush versus your hands so that you can be more precise.

The smell is divine, it’s minty fresh. Now, I don’t mind Adore rinses either because it’s not funky. But Overtone knocked it out of the park with that scent. I was able to apply this while my husband was home without him complaining about the smell.

Although I’m not vegan, it is a vegan friendly product which is also sulfate free.

Rinsing out with Overtone was WAY easier than when I use Adore. Adore rinses (for as long lasting as they are) never fully rinse out. You’ll stand there for 30 minutes trying to wash that rinse out of the hair. And every time you wash your hair afterwards...yup you’ll see color in the water. Overtone clearly deposited color, but didn’t stain my sink (I used the stainless steel kitchen sink just to be safe because I’ve definitely accidentally dyed my bathtub a time or two!).

Even though I didn’t get that Extreme Purple hue, I did get an obvious color change, which lets me know that this product is a strong color depositing rinse. That makes it a very good alternative to traditional hair dyes.

After washing and using their Extreme Purple Daily Conditioner, very little color rinsed out and my navy hue still looked very vibrant.

What Could Be Better:

Honestly, nothing. I like that they’re truthful on their website about potential results. I liked how easy this was to apply and that it wasn’t stinky. And most importantly I liked that even though I didn’t end up with a purple color, I still had a clear color change.

The Results:

As you can see in the opening post pic and in the one immediately above, it’s not really purple, except for at the very ends of my hair which were faded to a true blonde. However, the color I got, I LOVE because it’s everyday wearable. As much as I love bright fantasy shades, the reality is that I do have corporate clients I consult with - it’s not okay to go into meetings with bright pink or purple hair. I’ve been trying to do brown into navy ombre for a while but truth be told, Adore’s Royal Navy rinse would always deposit as teal on dyed blonde hair. For whatever reason, the previous Adore teal rinse mixed perfectly with Overtone’s Extreme Purple to create this beautiful subtle navy which is slightly visible, but isn’t shockingly bright. So, I give Overtone two thumbs up as they gave my beloved Italian Yaki unit new life!

For more info on Overtone or where to buy visit www.overtone.co or follow them on IG @overtonecolor

[j-wonwootrash]

The8 || Change

Word count: 2k Genre: Soulmate!au, fluff, slice of life, romance A/N: Part of the Seventeen soulmate!au. Enjoy! Do dm me for requests~ 

|| s.coups || jeonghan || joshua || jun || hoshi || wonwoo || woozi || dk || mingyu || the8 || seungkwan || vernon || dino

Your scream made Ayeon deaf for at least 10 seconds. She was reading a book when she jolted in her seat, your dolphin scream irritated her. “What now Y/N?” It wasn’t surprising for her to hear you scream because well, you were quite a scaredy-cat. 

“Ayeon!” you cried as you removed the towel from your damp hair- blonde with pink and blue highlights. No! This can’t be! 

“Ooh you’re so gonna get in trouble!” she hit you jokingly. “Hello detention!”

It wasn’t your doing, rather it was your soulmate- whom you never met. Your soulmate could’ve waited until the end of your school year. Did he even know how the school worked? Was he a rebel thinking that it was okay to color his hair in 3 shades? Did he ever think of you before he did it? All this thinking had you in a worried state. 

Luckily for you, you have a roommate who thought of an idea: Wear a beanie, she said. True enough, it was winter and it was alright to wear anything that would make you warm. As long as it fit the color coding of the system, no problem. You were in a girls’ school and you had to abide with the rules. No hair-dye was one of them. And it was that rule you never expected to break. You were the school’s ace and breaking the rules would be hindering your reputation.

And off you were, you tied your hair in a bun and wore the beanie. This is bothering, you thought, as you walked down the hallways of the lockers. Every girl whispered to themselves, curious of your attire. Your heels hit the slippery floor when they stopped at the call of the disciplinary teacher. “Y/N, come to my office.”

Oh boy, this is it. 

———

“I understand the weather is cold but as the school rules goes, you have to remove it once you’re at school grounds.” Mrs. Park reminded you.

You looked down to your shoes, not wanting to take it off. But you had to obey her. “Mrs. Park? Are you familiar with the soulmate thing going on nowadays?” you bravely asked her, avoiding her gaze.

“I’m well aware that most students consulted me of the matter. I supposed you have the same reason?” she closed her hands together, as she saw the blonde strands at the ends of your hairline.

 “Yes Ma'am,” you managed to speak without wavering. “I know I’m the school’s ace and reputation is most important and-”

“Nothing is more important than meeting your soulmate. I understand, you may leave.” she assured with a smile.

You left the office and sighed heavy. Ayeon and Risa came running to you, worried that you might get a warning. “Well she let me off the hook.” 

“As expected from the school’s ace!”

———

Months went by and you saw how your hair changed- the blue and pink strands slowly faded, curly blonde and now silver blonde. 

It worried you though, because the shoot for annual school magazine was approaching. And you didn’t want anyone to know of your hair colour. Might as well ask the editors to change from blonde to your hair colour.

“Just a few takes and we’re done.” Mr. Kang insisted. You politely asked for a request, and surprisingly they agreed. You let your hair down and they complimented how it suited you. 

“Well, it looks like I got it permed, but it’s natural enough.” you chuckled shyly. 

Minghao thought of dyeing his hair red for the next comeback of their first full album. He wasn’t aware of the whole soulmate thing but he was already reminded by his members to be careful of the colour he chooses, to be considerate of his soulmate. Apparently, he didn’t believe in such thing. 

“I want to dye my hair red.” he told Chan as he wiped his sweat from practice.

“You.. Hyung we have told you many times that-”

“But I don’t believe in those. I’m not convinced.” he hissed, looking at the younger one, who stared at his blonde hair that slowly turned copper brown. “What?”

Chan didn’t speak, he quickly just grabbed Minghao’s shoulders to the mirror behind him. “Are you convinced now?” 

The rest of the members came back from break and were amused to see Minghao’s hair. “Whoaho, we left for three minutes and it changed.” Jun touched the newly dyed hair. 

“Your soulmate seemed pretty annoyed with the marshmallow colours.” Soonyoung laughed. 

“Well, it was quick of her to realize it was Minghao hyung’s doing.” Seungkwan put down the boxes of chicken. 

Minghao wondered if you knew who he was, if you saw him perform at live shows or on tv. He was slightly convinced, however he later got bummed out after he knew he wouldn’t get to dye his hair red. 

His fans loved his hair, and one thing he could thank you for. His group was rising to be more popular than he thought. So he planned to let it slide for a while. 

———

He stared at the mirror, checked his watch where it marked the 7th month of having copper brown hair. He was getting impatient. No matter he tried to dye his hair red, you were always a step further. It got into his nerves. He really wanted to dye his hair red.

His members made fun of him, they copied his ways of tantrum, his expressions when his hair would always turn to brown just a day after he’d dye red. 

This year-end month, it was such good timing. Another comeback was approaching and he made sure you wouldn’t stop him from getting what he wanted. Even if you knew who he was, he’d do it right now. When his company agreed to let him dye his hair for the umpteenth time, he was beyond the clouds. For a few weeks at least, you did not bother him at all. 

“Finally I could be less stressed.” he laid down on the couch of their dorm.

“Well, when there’s achievement, always gotta be prepared of the consequences.” Jeonghan warned.

What could it be? he thought. He was happy that you finally let him choose the color he wanted. There was nothing he could think of.

Boom Boom was successful and the guest shows they did was too. He thanked you for that, that he made countless of memories with his group and fans. He thanked you for being understanding. Yet something in his heart felt empty. He couldn’t figure it out. His unit didn’t know what it was, though they knew what he felt. There he realized.

It was you he missed.

It was the continuous arguments of the change of hair color. It was the only thing that connected him to you, his soulmate. At least to figure out who you were or where you came from. Why was he inconsiderate of you in the past? Was it his beliefs that nearly made the both of you in pain?

———

For seven months you wondered why he let you have the copper brown hair. It was the color that you have always wanted after you finished school. For seven months you tried to figure who he was, why he would dye his hair so often that it took your happiness away. He annoyed you, yes, but you just couldn’t understand why he let you off the hook. It was the only connection, the only clue to his identity.

“Why soulmate why?” you stared at your red hair you had for weeks. “Who are you? And why do you do this?”

“Because I love you and the colors expresses my feelings for you.” Risa crept up from behind you as she pretended to be your soulmate.

“Ha ha very funny.” you rolled your eyes. “I just don’t understand. One moment he does it and then leaves it. And when I do it, he lets me. Now that my hair is red, I don’t know what to do.”

“The answer will probably come to you soon. You just have to wait for him.” Risa entered the toilet as she prepared a new hair color. “I’ll help you dye your hair. It’ll probably leave an impression on him once he sees his hair change.”

You took the packaging and your eyes widened. “Yellow blonde?” “Yeah, it suited you before, but this is a lil’ darker. I mean, I can tell you miss him. So why not show him?” she started to untie your hair.

“Yeah, I guess there’s no harm. There might be a lead.”

Once your hair was done, you felt weird. It suited you but you felt uneasy. Maybe I’m just overthinking things. Ayeon smiled at you, she saw how there were times you’d complain about him- so stubborn and rude.

It took you a lot of time to adjust to the blonde hair again, but you just let it be. It was the only way to know him. And for a few weeks, he acknowledged the hair color.

———

“Thank you for the hard work!” Minghao said to the staff after filming his unit’s music video. 

“Ah your hair suited you.” Jun praised him, messing his hair. “She probably got tired of the red hair and went back to blonde.”

“Wasn’t that the color that the universe introduced the both of you?” Chan asked the older one.

“Yeah. And I think she missed me.” Minghao went to a room where they rested.

“How?” Soonyoung questioned him with furrowed eyebrows.

“Think about it, if one of us stops then this whole soulmate thing would lose connection. It’s the only way that links us together.” he shyly covered his face.

“It’s the new year soon, what are you planning to do?” Jun placed his arms onto Minghao’s shoulders. 

“I’ll dye my hair brown.” 

———

A few months have passed and you liked the shade of brown your soulmate chose. You could tell he wasn’t annoyed anymore.

“Y/N!!!” Risa called you, her hands holding tickets.

“Did you win the lottery so that it made you hyper?” you pinched the girl’s cheeks, her lips forming a weird shape.

“I wish but no! Ayeon and I got VIP tickets to a concert!” A concert? You never been to one and you never got the time. You’ve always knew your friends have been into K-pop but you don’t really give much attention. Risa begged you to go with them in case they fainted, you would be the one to catch them.

“Okay okay I’ll go! Just tell me when.”

“Tomorrow!” she jumped several times.

That quick? You just let it slide and maybe just this once, have fun.

———

The concert was fully packed and you were shocked to see the amount of fans this group has. And to be honest, they were good, talented young men. There was this performance that left an impression on you, you believed it was a duo with a garter perhaps. It was graceful and elegant, you wondered how long they practiced.

All you could remember was the screams of Ayeon and Risa. They waved their lightstick almost throughout the whole concert and their energy was still full. Once the concert ended, you all lined up for a hi-touch. Your friends never mentioned about it but here you were, so close, despite being the last one to see them.

And then you saw them. They were handsome, tall and polite. You recalled one of the duo to be the next one in line. As you hands touched, a flow of electricity ran through your bodies.

Minghao saw a particular girl who he assumed was dragged by her friends. And that made him laugh. When he saw you approaching and he brought out his hands, a sensation ran his body.

Everyone saw the ends of your hairs, like lightsticks, they lit up in colors, from blonde to silver to red to blonde and to what was original, brown.

You both blushed, upon realizing your hands were still together. You tried to let go but he tightened his grip. “No, don’t. Stay like this for a while.” he whispered. “My name is Minghao.”

“Y/N..” you averted his gaze. “I’m not sure what to do now.” His large hands were still in yours.

“I- uh..” he started. “Hi soulmate.” his tinted cheeks became more red that his friends, took notice of.

“Ni-nice to meet you..” you cleared your throat. “..soulmate.”

[determ1project]

Little White Lies Poster

In lesson yesterday we followed up in looking into different graphic designers, with the theme of them being big within the movie industry. First we looked at the work of Saul Bass with his style of artwork within his posters. 

I feel compared to Saul Bass, Little White Lies style is very different to that of Bass. Where in Bass’s work you will see that predominately it consists of well placed and well constructed basic objects, relevant of course to the movie title. However within the work of Little White Lies you see the attention to fine detail is unmatched. 

Here are the pieces of artwork created by Little White Lies that I used colours from:

It was vital for me to ensure I chose 3 pieces that all had very contradictory colour ways. So within this I chose a piece that consists of very bright and vibrant colours so I would have that option. This is as well as an image with a lot more neutral colours and one with my two favourite colours; that being the blue and red image at the top.

So to begin with we needed the illustrations we made the day prior to this as this is what we were using and enhancing digitally. So as a reminder here is what mine looked like:

This was how mine started off after drawing it and going over it with a black sharpee. Once scanned in I was able to begin turning this in to a Little White Lies creation.

First of all we had to remove the background so we could later on shift our design on to the Little White Lies template. We did this by using the selection tool to highlight our designs and our designs only.

The first step was once loaded on to Photoshop we altered the lines by using,

IMAGE-BRIGHTNESS AND CONTRAST.

This allowed for the lines to appear bolder and therefore standing out more within the art. 

Next was to allow for us to be able to colour over the black lines, which ultimately makes it much easier to use BRUSH TOOL to colour it in. To do this you have to RASTERISE the layer and ensure that the colouring you’re doing is on the LAYER BELOW. This allows your colour to not be shown on the black lines therefore making your colouring in a little easier. 

The first stage of my colouring began with the title of the movie. However this was before I set it so I could draw on the black lines. So within this image the black will appear much less significant as to how they do in the later progression and the final piece.

So after a lot colouring eventually I came up with this.

So as you can see in the final design for my actual illustration came out like this. In terms of the colours I used all are variations or the actual colours from the three images previously shown. The purple is a different shade of the blue from my favourite image and the red being from the same example. 

The title is in a darker shade of the same red with the character in the poster being various shades taken from the image above. 

To top if off are some smaller details like the tyre colours with the addition of the number plate and the head lights a long with the air vents and the front grill. 

Ultimately I personally really like this piece and how the initial colouring has come out. The addition of the road was necessary to complete the final piece; I think the colours go nicely and the layout is exactly how I want it. 

So to finalise the poster it had to be added on to a Little White Lies template that added the signature elements of one of their pieces.

However there was one thing we had to do first and that was turn our type in to a pattern to go on the background.

This was how we began. By using the SELECTION TOOL we highlighted the section we wanted to turn in to a repeating pattern, which in this instance was the title of our movie. 

By choosing the DEFINE PATTERN it would allow you to select how frequent the pattern was and it’s size. Once selected we used the option of FILL NEW LAYER.

Once selected we chose the option PATTERN and from there we could choose our design that we had just used.

To make sure it went in to the poster and not be covered by the background colour we had to ensure the layer was in the correct position.

Now as seen in this image the background layer is in a shade of pink. This was only really used to test if the background layer was working properly however here is what it looked like.

I really am not a fan of how this outcome looks. The colour is way too bright and doesn’t really share any similarities to the actual colours of the illustrations. 

Also in this within the title there are remaining bits of white, negative space. This issue was eradicated by simply going back and using the selection tool to remove any space the initial wipe had left. 

So in my second design I decided to go with a red that matched the main car within the poster.

Here is how it looked.

Now despite this being a visual improvement I still don’t think this is a viable design. The red matches too much to the point where an observer may not even initially see the car which is one of the main focuses. 

So on the same basis of matching the background with the cars I decided to use a similar purple and this ended up being my final piece.

Now this is definetely my favourite design. What I prefer about this compared to my previous variations is that the colours go together perfectly as I feel in this they’re in the right places to stand out.

As you can see I made the car a darker shade than the background so it isn’t lost, so it still pops and stands out. 

Overall I did really enjoy this task when I got the hang of it and in the end I came out with a final piece that I am proud to of produced.

[shawesomephotography]

Photo Optimisation of 12 Images

Before editing my images I had to choose what software package I was going to use. I decided on Adobe Lightroom, as it is the software I am most familiar with, but also because it is ideal for reviewing a large volume of images and narrowing down to particular selection. 

Below are 12 images that show my knowledge and use of the different camera techniques I have learned throughout the first block of my NC photography course. I have grouped images that use the same techniques, and each image will be accompanied by a small description discussing how the image was taken, and what alterations were made in Lightroom.

Pinhole Photography:

Photo 1, Light Trails

The first thing that I changed in this image was the temperature and tint that was applied. I changed these rather than sticking with the photos original values to make the light trails more vibrant. I then increased the photos exposure and contrast significantly to make the reflections in the floor appear more prominent. Increasing the contrast also meant that I could brighten up what was in the foreground, while keeping the background low key.

The highlights for this photo altered the brightness of the light trails even further than the exposure; while the whites changed the brightness of the boxes and reflections.

Reducing the shadows in the photo again helped to increase the presence of reflections. I didn't change the blacks slider, as I was happy with how the darker tones looked already.

You can also see in the colour adjustments panel that I made changes to the levels of red in the image. This was to counter out the effects caused by changing the tint earlier in the image.

I also used the spot removal tool to get rid of the hair that was on the screen in the bottom left corner of the frame. 

Photo 2, Abstract Stairs

For this image I slightly increased the exposure to brighten up the photo overall. I then increased the contrast to make the lines created by each flight of stairs more intense.

I reduced the highlights to -50 to cancel out the areas that became too bright from an increased exposure.

The shadows and whites remained the same, while I decreased the blacks to make the dark lines created in the frame even stronger.

I also increased the clarity by a very small amount to add some fidelity to this shot, but I didn't want to apply it too much as it added unwanted ‘noise’. Noise in an image is artificial grain that appears when detail is added in digitally where there isn't enough detail to begin with; because this image is out of focus, Lightroom cannot add much detail into the shot.

The shape and lines captured in this image draws he viewers eyes from he foreground into the background, as they follow the spiralling lines of the stairs getting further away.

Shutter Speed (Panning):

Photo 1, People Carrier

In this shot I kept the exposure slider as it was shot, but reduced the contrast levels. This was because of the lack of detail in the dark blacks in the person walking through the shot, as well as the washed out detail in the clouds. By bringing the contrast down, it made the following adjustments have even more of an impact.

The highlights were reduced to bring out more of the detail in the clouds, and also to give the car a more detailed look as it looked flat and grey before my adjustments. Increasing the shadows slightly helped to make the shapes in the background of the shot appear to have more detail, even though it is blurry from the motion of the camera. The whites slider was brought down considerably to increase the detail visible in the clouds, car and also the writing in the foreground. The blacks slider remained the same, as the previous adjustments meant that it didn't need to be altered.

I made good use of the clarity, vibrance and saturation sliders when editing this image. This was because I took the photo on an overcast day; so using these adjustments adds a great deal of colour to a shot, and adds a level detail that wasn't there before being edited. 

The clarity slider was increased slightly to make the car as well as the blurred background appear sharper. The vibrance and saturation sliders were both increased a lot to add more colour and make up for the tones lost when the contrast was decreased.

Photo 2, Land Rover

For this shot I used the exact same slider levels as the previous panning shot. I was able to do this with ease, as Adobe Lightroom is designed so that a user can edit multiple photos at the same time.

I chose to use the same edit setting for both panning images as they were taken only minutes apart in the same location; meaning that not much in the frame had changed apart from the subject.

The framing of this shot is different however. I aligned myself so that when I pressed the shutter, a road sign was in the centre of the shot (with my previous image, the road sign was restricting where I positioned myself).

I think that in this shot, I captured a more immersive image, as it shows greater depth in the background with the buildings at both sides of the frame, and also looks better having the pavement in the foreground be level with the bottom of the frame.

Aperture (Depth of Field):

Photo 1, Stair Case from above

The exposure and contrast for this image stayed untouched as they were already ideal when the shot was taken.

The ‘highlights’, ‘shadows’, ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ sliders all received minimal adjustments just to tweak the appearance of the shot, and add more vibrant tones.

Increasing the highlights by 25 made the blue landing on each floor stand out more. While decreasing the rest of the tone sliders brought out more detail in the concrete, and also made dark the lines in the reflective railings more prominent to create a more obvious path for the viewers eye to follow.

This shot was purposely framed to direct the viewers eye from the foreground into the background along the spiralling path of the stairs.

The clarity and saturation sliders were both increased slightly to bring out a final extra bit of detail in the concrete and blue landings.

You can see at the bottom of the sliders panel, that I used ‘colour select’ to isolate the blue in this image, and drastically improve its effect. By increasing the saturation of blue in the image, I was able to make the landings of each floor vibrant and a more dominant part of the frame which in turn creates a patter as they recede into the background.

I also used the ‘spot removal’ tool when editing this image to remove my shoe which was visible in the middle of the frame through the slits in the railing. Now looking back at my edit, I can see that I didn't pay close enough attention to what I was replacing, as there should be a black strip running across that step like there is on every over step. This is something that I could easily go back and fix, as I have saved all of my edits in PSD file format. This allows me to go back and readjust any previous edits made.

Photo 2, Work Site

I reduced the overall exposure of this image slightly to get rid of the washed out colours that were especially apparent in the trees and machinery in the background. Increasing the contrast brought out all of the bright colours that can be found in the shot even more. 

The highlights slider was reduced significantly to bring out more detail in the whites found in the cones and the subjects hard hat. It also made the ground in the background a lot more detailed, as the texture is now prominent. The whites slider was increased to make up for reducing the exposure of the image. It also brought back some of vibrance that was taken away from the bright colours in the shot.

The ‘clarity’, ‘vibrance’ and ‘saturation’ sliders were all left untouched, as I was happy with how the image was looking from the previous adjustments. 

I also used the colour select tool to make the overalls worn by the subject even more vibrant than the other ‘high-visibility’ colours found in the shot. By doing this, it is clear what the main focus of the shot is, and it is now the first place in the frame that the viewers attention is drawn towards.

Focal Length:

Image showing Lightroom alterations

For my focal length images, I took three images all in the same location to exhibit the effects that altering a lenses focal length has. Because I took all of my shots in the same location within a small time frame, nothing in the shots was different other than the effects from altering the focal length. This meant that I was able to take advantage of Lightrooms ability to edit multiple images at once.

I slightly reduced the exposure of all the images, as the subject in my photos appeared washed out compared to once I changed this. The contrast remained the same, as the different ones in the shot were already well established.

The highlights were slightly reduced to help blight out detail lost in the subjects jacket, while the whites slider was reduced considerably to stop the building in the background being over exposed while the rest of the image wasn't.

Both the shadows and blacks were altered only slightly to help the appearance of the grey tones found in the fence and ground.

The clarity was increased slightly to sharpen up the subject and the fence, just to make them more prominent in the frame. The vibrance was increased to change the appearance of the blue in the sky and the other colours found in the background behind the subject.

Collage showing all three images at different focal lengths together-

These image are annotated to show what the focal length of the lens used when taking each shot. I will now explain what is going on in these images and what it means to use different focal lengths.

Firstly, focal length refers to the distance that the lens of a camera is focused on. you can see in the above images that a 18mm focal length is close to the camera, and gives a wide field of view. Whereas  using a focal length of 140 means that the subject will be far away from the camera, and also means that the field of view is narrow.

This is why I took my focal length shots next to a fence with evenly spaced slats; so the viewer can clearly the see the effects of a wide and narrow field of view in action.

We can see that as the focal length used when taking an image increases, the distance between the gaps in the fence appear to get smaller. This is because the depth of field reduces when the focal length increases. ‘Depth of Field’ refers to how much of a scene is captured by a camera; this means that a wide angle shot has a large field of view, as more is fitted into the frame. Unlike a zoomed in shot, where what is fitted into the frame is reduced in order to fill the frame with a subject further away.

Studio Portrait:

Photo 1, Kirstin

I increased the exposure of this image by 0.6 because I felt that the original shot was slightly too dark. This, along with increasing the contrast immediately improved the look of this image, making the subject stand out more against the white background.

The highlights remained untouched, while I increased the shadows slider, to bring out more detail in places such as the subjects hair an d the writing on their top. By increasing the whites slider I brightened the background in the shot, which now contrasts better with the subject. The blacks were increased very slightly just to fine tune the appearance of my subject.

Although the vibrance slider remains untouched; I altered the clarity of the image and the saturation levels to make the skin tones of the subject stand out better.

I also used the spot removal tool for multiple applications in this image. One of the uses I had for the spot removal tool was getting rid of any blatant and distracting marks. I then used the spot removal tool to go up close and alter some blemishes in the subjects face, which were worsened from increasing the different sliders.

Photo 2, Neve

The exposure and contrast for this image both remained the same as when taken because I was happy with the overall appearance of the shot, and was only looking to change specific traits.

The highlights also remained untouched, but I increased the shadows levels considerably to brighten up the subject, her top and most importantly her hair. The whites were increased to bring out the brighter parts in the subjects face; while the blacks got reduced to make sure that the background wasn't to obvious.

Due to already achieving the look a was hoping for from this image, especially the way that the subjects red hair now stands out, I didn't have to adjust anymore sliders. I did however have to use the spot removal tool to get rid of a few areas in the background that had became more prominent as the shadows were increased.

Studio Still Life:

Photo 1, Perfume Bottle

I kept the contrast the same for this shot, while increasing the contrast to make the perfume bottle stand out against its background, and also to make the bokeh in the background more prominent against the red background.

With the highlights staying the untouched, I increased the shadows to bring out more detail in the marble looking top of the bottle. I hugely reduced the whites to keep the low key look of the shot once I had increased the contrast. I brought the blacks up too, so that the lines in the bottle had a softer look which better matches having bokeh in the background.

The clarity slider was increased slightly to just give the ridges in the bottle more presence.

I used the colour select tool to enhance the look of the red background.

I also made use of the spot removal tool to get rid of some imperfections and dirt that was on the perfume bottle, which were made more obvious after adjusting sliders.

Photo 2, Ornament

Due to the subject in this image having lots of different colours running through it, it was important that I chose adjustments that made them all look just as vibrant as each other, and that no one colour was more prominent than an other.

I began by slightly increasing the exposure to brighten up the overall image. although this improved the look of the ornament, it meant that I had to reduce the whites slider considerably to ensure that the background wasn't washed out.

The contrast was reduced in order to have all of the colours tones closer together.

The shadows slider was not changed, but as I noted before, I lowered the whites slider to insure that the background want over exposed. The blacks slider was increased to bring out the detail in the darker colours, and also to brighten up the black base of the ornament.

the vibrance and saturation were both increased to have effect on how the colours in the ornament appear.

I also used the colour select tool in order to alter individual colours, so that anything that was still not vibrant after my previous alterations would be.

The spot removal tool had to be used to get rid of a lot of the imperfections that showed up in the background after alterations.

[justlookfrightened]

Neighbors AU, Part 3: Chapter 6: Dec. 31 and Jan 1: New Year’s Eve and Day, New York and Providence

Read it on AO3

Or read chapter 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5

Eric settled into his seat at Madison Square Garden and took a good look around.

He was already tired from spending the day wandering Manhattan with Ransom and Holster, including a stop to skate at Rockefeller Center. Holster had urged him into a few spins and simple jumps in his new figure skates, and Eric had blushed at the admiration of his fellow skaters.

Now his former captains were joining him for the 6 p.m. game, which should end in plenty of time for the crowd to get out and join the masses waiting for the ball to drop. Or celebrate the New Year however.

Eric wouldn't be caught dead in Times Square, even though that's where Ransom and Holster were heading after the game. He was going to meet Jack at his hotel, order room service, and celebrate by watching the revelry in the streets below. In all honesty, he couldn't think of a better plan.

Holster plopped into the seat next to him with a beer and a frankly alarming pastrami sandwich. Ransom had a steak sandwich on garlic bread and his own beer. He passed Eric a pretzel and bottle of water.

“Bro, you sure you don't want more to eat?” Holster said. “Growing boy like you has got to keep his strength up.”

“Haha,” Eric said. “I'm 23. And a half.”

Oops. That sounded less petulant in his head. “Anyway, I'm going to eat later with Jack. Food that doesn't come from an arena.”

“You sure man?” Ransom said. “They have some tasty offerings. Not just hot dogs and pizza.”

“Really, I'm fine,” Eric said. “Thanks for coming to hang with me today.”

“Bits. You got us primo seats to watch the Rangers at the garden on New Year’s Eve. We are going to experience the ball drop in Times Square,” Ransom said, somehow making it sound dirty. “Believe me, we should be thanking you.”

Eric narrowed his eyes.

“Watch the Rangers?” he said.

“Only in that they'll be playing the Falconers,” Ransom said, gesturing to his Mashkov jersey.

“All right then,” Eric said, with fake huff and a smile to show he was kidding.

The smile brightened by an order of magnitude when the Falconers took the ice for warmups, and on one of his laps, Jack stopped and tapped the glass in front of them.

“There’s your boy,” Holster said. “That is one fine hockey ass.”

“I know,” Eric said.

The three of them were a knot of Falconers’ blue and yellow in a sea of the Rangers’ darker blue, and they drew more attention by cheering when Poots slipped a puck past Lundqvist to open the scoring. Eric caught a some eyes lingering as they settled back down, but no one said anything directly to him. Well, besides the fans booing and yelling at them to sit down, but that was to be expected when you were rooting for the visiting team. Especially in New York.

The ones looking at him might know who he was, as in, he was Jack Zimmermann’s boyfriend, not that he was Eric Bittle, baker from Providence. Last spring, that would have bothered, even frightened, him. Now, as long as no one was rude, well, it was fine.

That might have something to do with his seat between two very large men wearing Falconers’ gear.

Still, when he caught the eye of a young man a few rows away, who looked at him and offered a smile, Eric nodded back.

The game went to the first intermission with the Falconers’ still up 1-0.

In the second period, the Rangers tied it on a Mats Zuccarello goal.

“Shit, Bitty, he’s like your size,” Holster said. “Maybe you should have tried for the NHL.”

Eric laughed and said, “He’s about my height, but I’m pretty sure he’s got like 30 pounds on me. And it wasn’t like there were any teams scouting me. It was you they were coming to see, but you didn’t end up signing anywhere either.”

Holster shrugged.

“If I tried to play, I know I would have been down in the minors for a while,” Holster said. “It’s not much money, and I could get hurt, and I wouldn’t really have any control. I could be traded and end up anywhere. I’d rather make decent coin helping companies figure their shit out, and be able to share a lovely apartment with Ransom here. And be pretty sure both my knees will work when I get home. … I loved playing at Samwell, but to go pro? You have to really want it, and when I thought about it, I decided I didn’t want it enough.”.

Eric nodded. Hockey was never going to be it for him either, no matter how encouraging Jack and the other Falconers were about his skill. But he’d been willing to take a part-time job in a bakery to find a way to use his interest in pastry and the social media expertise he’d developed. It probably wasn’t what his parents envisioned when they sent him up north for college, but it had worked out well so far.

***************************

Jack found Eric sitting between Adam and Justin on a sofa in the hotel lobby, all three still wearing Falconers’ jerseys.

Justin was talking about his decision to apply to medical school after two years out of college.

“I think I want to practice medicine, but even if I don’t, the degree will help with the work I’m doing now,” he said. “It will actually open up more avenues for me, and they could be really lucrative.”

“Is that why you’re doing it?” Eric asked.

Justin stared at him for a long moment, but Eric just looked back steadily, until Justin shrugged.

“It would be way cool to help a kid get better from being really sick,” he said. “Or to save someone’s life … I could do that, I think. But maybe I’m better doing research. I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to have it all figured out, bro,” Adam said. “One step at a time.”

“That’s right, Rans,” Eric said. “I think you’ll be a great doctor, whatever you do with it.”

“I have to get in first,” Ransom said.

“You will,” Eric said.

Jack chose that moment to approach, saying, “You guys have some courage, wearing those out here.”

The game had ended in a 3-2 win for the Falconers, with Jack’s goal with five minutes left making the difference. Blocking a shot at the other end -- with his face -- had also contributed, and won him far more chirps in the dressing room.

“Oh, honey,” Eric said, leaping up. “Look at that. It must hurt.”

Eric stood in front of him, hand hovering near Jack’s cheekbone, now sporting three neat sutures and starting to purple.

“It’s alright,” Jack said. “I would have come back to play if there was time.”

Adam and Justin stood behind Eric.

“Jack, nice game,” Adam said.

“Sweet goal, man,” Justin added. “Wicked block, too.”

“Thanks, guys,” Jack said.

“We’re going to head out,” Adam said. “Bits, don’t be a stranger. Jack, good to see you again.”

“And don’t do anything we wouldn’t do, boys,” Justin chimed in.

Eric blushed, reached up to hug both of them and said, “Happy New Year, guys. Thanks for coming today.”

“We wouldn’t have missed it, Bits,” Holster said.

Jack gave a nod and a half-wave. “Happy New Year,” he said. “And really, thanks.”

Once Eric’s friends pushed through the revolving door and into the throngs of revelers, Jack laced his fingers through Eric’s and tugged him towards the elevator.

“Come on, bud,” he said. “I can’t wait to get out of this suit and have some dinner.”

“Mmm,” Eric said. “You out of that suit sounds good to me. Seriously, though, how bad does your face hurt?”

“Not too bad yet,” Jack said. “They gave me lidocaine before they stitched it up. I still should ice it to keep the swelling down, though.”

“Did they give you anything else?” Eric asked.

“Ibuprofen,” Jack said.

“When are you due for more?”

“Any time it hurts enough that I want it after, what, about 1?”

“OK,” Eric said. “I’ll get some ice when we get upstairs while you get comfortable.”

“I can get the ice,” Jack said. “You order dinner. Get what you want. Get dessert if you want it.”

Jack opened the door and ushered Eric in. He watched as Eric took in the champagne already chilling and the vase of roses.

“Oh. my Lord, Jack, what did you do?” Eric said.

“I wanted tonight to be special for you,” Jack said. “Romantic. Sorry about …” he gestured to his face.

“It’s still romantic,” Eric said. “It’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me. Now you get that jacket off. Sit there while I get the ice. Then I’ll call for dinner.”

Within minutes, Jack was reclined on the bed in sweatpants and a soft T-shirt, a bag of ice wrapped in a hand-towel against his face. Eric had changed to sweats and T-shirt as well, but he put Jack’s jersey back on.

“I just like to see you in it,” Jack had said, almost shyly.

“Whatever you want,” Eric had said.

Dinner was on its way, and Eric had poured each of them a glass of champagne and sat next to Jack on the bed. Jack picked up the remote to click off the hockey highlights he was watching.

“You don’t have to,” Eric said. “I know they’re important to you.”

Jack turned the TV off.

“I can watch them later.”

“I just wanted to say this year turned out so different -- so much better -- than anything I ever expected,” Eric said. “And it’s all because of you.”

“No,” Jack said. “I mean yes, this year was so wonderful, but I don’t deserve all the credit. It’s all you. You make me better. You make me want to be better. And for the first time in a few years at least, I can’t wait to see what next year brings.”

****************************

Eric answered the door when the waiter arrived with their dinner: a filet mignon for him, a New York strip steak for Jack.

He’d only half-jokingly asked if Jack wanted the chicken tenders from the children’s menu. Jack seemed to consider it for a moment, then said, “No. It’s a special occasion, and as much as I like them, chicken tenders aren’t special-occasion food. I can have red meat every so often.”

Eric had nearly choked when he saw the menu prices, but Jack had reassured him that it was fine.

If anything, Jack seemed surprised that Eric chose the smaller cut of meat, and strawberries and cream for dessert, along with a side of grilled vegetables.

Eric shrugged.

“It’s an eight-ounce filet, Jack,” he said. “A half-pound of beef is plenty for anyone who doesn’t routinely use up 10,000 calories in a day.”

“But no decadent cake? Where’s the Eric I know and love?” Jack asked.

“Please. Anything we order in a hotel now will have been baked this morning at the latest,” Eric said. “I’d like to think I’ve got you spoiled enough to appreciate fresh baked goods. Besides, I want to see whether $16 can actually get you tasty strawberries in December.”

The waiter had pushed the cart in, and Eric took the check in its folder to the bed for Jack to sign it. He raised his eyebrows at the size of the tip Jack added.

“Clearly, I’m in the wrong line of work,” Eric said, after the waiter set their plates on the table and withdrew with the cart.

Jack shrugged.

“He’s lucky if he’s even getting minimum wage in a job that gets tips,” Jack said. “And in a place like this, lots of foreign travelers with different tipping customs, probably not everybody tips at all.”

“But there was a tip included!”

Jack shrugged. “It never hurts to be generous,” he said. “That’s what my parents always taught me. And, well, it’s self-serving, but people know my name, and the last thing anyone wants is a reputation for being cheap.”

“So wait, you think Enrique is going to go back downstairs and tell everyone that he just brought dinner to Jack Zimmermann and his boyfriend, and got a $50 tip?” Eric said.

“Maybe,” Jack said. “Maybe not. But I sure don’t want him to go downstairs and say Jack Zimmermann was there with his boyfriend, couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed, and gave him a lousy $5.”

He paused.

“Enrique?”

“He was wearing a nametag,” Eric said.

“Should I be jealous?” Jack said. “I suppose he was kind of cute …”

“Oh, hush,” Eric said. “It’s just good manners to call people by their names, especially people in hospitality who wear their names on them, for Pete’s sake. You get tired of people not even noticing you’re actually human, you know? For what it’s worth, I’m glad you were generous. He’s working New Year’s Eve, when he’d probably rather be with his own family or girlfriend or boyfriend. Now eat. You need the food to recover after a game like that.”

Jack got up and sat at the table with Eric, and Eric watched him eat.

The injury to his face was high enough that chewing didn’t seem to bother him, and it did nothing to ruin his looks. Really, Eric sometimes thought, it wasn’t fair for one person to be so good-looking, with his glossy dark hair, clear blue eyes that always drooped just a bit, bone structure that models would kill for -- and that was just his face.

From the neck down, he might have been carved from marble, he was so perfect. And somehow, he thought Eric was attractive.

Jack was quiet while he ate, which wasn’t unusual. Still, if Jack was ever going to be chatty, it would be after a game, especially if he had a drink or two. The combination of the adrenaline wearing off and the alcohol usually loosened his mouth, showing Eric a flirty, sometimes goofy side that Eric had come to cherish.

Now, on his second glass of champagne, Jack worked his way through his steak and just looked at Eric.

“You OK, honey?” Eric asked. “If your face is bothering you, or you’re too tired, we could go to sleep as soon as you’re done eating. We don’t have to stay up.”

“What? No,” Jack said. “It’s our first New Year’s together. Aren’t we supposed to kiss at midnight? Isn’t that what people do?”

“Sure, sugar, but not if you’re in pain,” Eric said. “We can kiss anytime. As much as you want.”

“Kiss me now?” Jack asked, smirking.

So Eric leaned across the table and gave him a small peck.

“I want to kiss you at midnight,” Jack said. “And for as long as possible afterwards. Really, my face will be OK. It’s not as bad the one I had that first time I saw you.”

“No?” Eric said. “Same number of stitches.”

“But the rest isn’t as bad,” Jack said. “This one didn’t nearly break my jaw, or loosen any teeth.”

Eric shook his head.

“And you went out running that afternoon.”

“It makes me feel better,” Jack said.

“Fine,” Eric said. “No running tonight.”

“I think I can come up with better things to do,” Jack said. “Like kissing you.”

****************************

Jack licked the cream off a strawberry before popping it in his mouth, and smirked at the blush that rose on Eric’s face.

He hadn’t done it on purpose -- well, not entirely. And if he could distract Eric from his injury, so much the better. He had plans for the holiday, and they didn’t include Eric tucking him in with an ice pack. He could live with the pain.

He dipped another strawberry in the cream and held it out for Eric.

“Open your mouth,” he said.

Eric did, and managed to wrap his lips around Jack’s fingers as well as the berry. Then, once he swallowed it, his tongue darted out to lick a drop of cream from the corner of his mouth.

“Two can play at that game, Mr. Zimmermann.”

Jack knew he was as red as Eric had been, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“That’s the best way,” he said.

Eric then scooped up a berry and fed it to Jack, before popping another one in his mouth.

“Mmmmm. Not bad, especially for December, but nowhere near as good as a ripe strawberry in June, fresh off the plant and all warm from the sun. Have you ever gone strawberry-picking, Jack?”

“Can’t say I have,” Jack said. “In good years, June’s kind of busy.”

“Strawberry season’s a little later in New England,” Eric said. “And playoffs end before the end of June, right?”

“Usually somewhere around the 20th,” Jack said.

“Then it’s a date,” Eric said. “We’ll go as soon as you’re available.”

Jack felt warmth radiating from his stomach as though he was eating those sun-warmed berries now. Eric was talking about a date nearly six months in the future. He didn’t care if it was strawberry-picking or going to a black-tie gala. Eric was counting on them being together. That made his plan that much easier to follow through on.

But not yet. It was 11:50, and in 10 minutes it would be midnight, and he was going to kiss Eric and wish him a happy New Year, and he was going to kiss Eric again, and take him to bed.

Eric was standing by the window, watching the crowds thronging in the streets below.

“Come over here,” Eric said.

Jack filled Eric’s champagne flute again; his own was still half-full. He carried both with him to the window, setting them on a side table, and wrapped his arms around Eric from behind. He rested the unhurt side of his face against Eric’s hair while he looked outside.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people,” Eric said. “This is so different from Madison, or even Samwell or Providence.”

“It is crowded,” Jack said. “Do you think you’d ever want to live in a city like New York?”

He was honestly curious. He could imagine how many baked goods Eric could sell here, or if he didn’t want the day-to-day job of running a bakery, he could do something with a cooking show. His vlog had added viewers by the thousands over the last several months, and if people came because they heard Eric was Jack’s boyfriend, they stayed because Eric was a warm, friendly presence who made baking (or sometimes cooking healthy food) seem easy and fun. Jack sometimes watched it when he was on the road, especially during the day when didn’t want to bother Eric at work. He’d never actually asked if it was all right, but he figured it was the first time he came home and made a recipe Eric had shared on the vlog while he was gone and Eric just smiled and told him he’d got it right.

“New York?” Eric asked. “I don’t think so. I like Providence for now. Although it was fun to wander around today. I think Holster posted some pictures of me skating. We kind of have the best of both worlds, don’t we? A smaller city to live in, but close to Boston and even close enough to visit here?”

“I like it too,” Jack said. “Look -- the countdown.”

Eric counted along.

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 --”

“Eric, I love you so much,” Jack broke in. “Happy New Year.”

He pulled Eric in for a long kiss. When they broke apart, Eric said, “Happy New Year, Jack. For the record, I love you so much too.”

Jack handed Eric his glass, they toasted, sipped, and kissed again.

Tomorrow, they were going to sleep late, at least for them, and maybe go out for a run, and go out for breakfast, and then drive home together.

They could stop for fish tacos, and watch the Winter Classic and college football. It was going to be the best New Year’s ever.

*************************

Eric supposed he was lucky that Jack let them sleep until 8:30. Then it was out of bed, lacing up trainers and pulling on hats and jackets, and a quick run through the streets of Manhattan and the paths in Central Park.

Back to the hotel, shower, check out, head out for breakfast and to pick up Jack’s car from the public garage where Eric had left it the day before.

Eric curled into the passenger seat and watched Jack drive. He was a restful driver to watch, handling the wheel with the same easy grace he did anything physical. Eric found a quiet, restful playlist to the match the mood and let himself zone out.

He’d left the bakery in Dex’s hands again yesterday, and everything seemed to go fine again. It was the second time in a week, but Eric consoled himself with the knowledge that last year, he’d taken nearly two weeks vacation at the holidays. Matthew had covered by moving someone down from the Boston bakery, which had a bigger staff.

This year, with Eric spreading his time off out by taking a day here and a day there, creating the daily menus to fit with Dex’s skills and making sure ingredients were on hand, he’d been able to manage with the staff he had.

Maybe in a few months, Dex would be able. to cover for a whole week, and Eric could accept the Zimmermanns’ invitation to visit with Jack in the off-season.

He knew that technically, it wasn’t really his problem. Matthew had promised him two weeks of vacation a year, and how to cover for him should be Matthew’s problem. Realistically, the longer he was at the bakery, the more he put his own stamp on it and the less involvement Matthew had in the day-to-day operations. Now nearly everything the bakery served had been at least tweaked by Eric, and several of his creations were on the menu in the Boston bakeries too.

He thought about what Alicia had suggested at Thanksgiving -- that he buy the bakery and make it entirely his own. He really didn’t have any money, though. He’d graduated with his savings nearly cleaned out, and lived paycheck to paycheck at least until the last six months. Once he’d paid up on his security deposit and last month’s rent, he could put a couple of hundred away each month. Actually, he’d been able to save a little more; Jack insisted on paying for most of the groceries that ended up in his kitchen, and anything they did together when they went out, and it was hard to argue that they should go dutch more often.

But a one-paycheck cushion was not enough to look at buying a business. No bank would look at him, 23 years old with an American studies degree, for a loan. Maybe in a few years, he told himself again.

By the time he took notice of where they were, they were making their way through Connecticut, almost to New Haven. Jack hadn’t spoken at all, which was quiet even for him. He seemed to be wrapped in his own thoughts as well, and concern prickled at Eric. He knew Jack could spiral into anxiety when he was like this.

“Did I ever tell you about our game against Yale when I was a freshman?” Eric said. “That was when I scored my first goal in college. I couldn’t believe it.”

Jack roused himself from his reverie.

“Why not? You’re a sniper,” he said.

“I had my eyes closed, Jack,” Eric deadpanned. “It was a lucky shot.”

Jack grunted. “Maybe,” he said. “But you must have been in the right place at the right time, and you did take the shot. You know, my Uncle Wayne says you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

“Did you -- Uncle Wayne?” Eric sputtered. “I know who said that, Jack. What am I going to do with you?”

“Take me home and have your way with me?” Jack teased.

“Hush, you.”

Eric’s gambit seemed to have worked, as Jack spoke more freely about his hockey “uncles” as they made their way home.

Jack stopped for fish tacos at the same place he had the first time they skated together before they reached the building, and opened doors and waited for Eric to enter and exit the elevator before him.

It felt like a date, Eric thought, like Jack was courting him. Didn’t he know that he already had Eric, hook, line and sinker?

After Eric stowed his bag in his apartment, he came back to Jack’s to eat and watch the Winter Classic. He was just getting up to put the plates in the kitchen at the first intermission when Jack said, “Eric, wait. There’s something I want to ask you.”

Eric stopped and felt the blood drain from his face. Was Jack going to propose? Please not yet, he thought. I need time to prepare for this.

But Jack wasn’t on one knee or anything. He was still seated on the couch, looking earnestly at Eric.

“I was thinking that it might be easier if you moved in here, like full-time,” Jack said. “You like to cook in the kitchen, and most of your equipment is here by now. There’s laundry in the unit, and there’s plenty of room, and I know you like the shower.”

“Jack, why do you sound like a real estate ad?” Eric said, laughing. “I think we know that your apartment is superior to mine in every possible way.”

“Not if you don’t live here,” Jack said.

“But honey, it’s good for us to have different places,” Eric said. “And our schedules are so different.”

“I know,” Jack said. “And you should keep your place. Just move more of your clothes here, and sleep here more often. You know you’re comfortable here, and I sleep better with you. But it’s your decision, of course.”

Eric smiled, then let out a sigh that was meant to sound put upon.

“Fine, Mr. Zimmermann, if it helps you sleep,” he said. “I’ll tell you a secret: I sleep better with you too. Then again, it might be the mattress.”

[myleswriting]

My Dear Melancholy Reveiw

My Dear Melancholy, is the first EP by Canadian R&B artist and pop star Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, following up his 2016 album Starboy. Released March 30th, 2018 the album marks a return to the darker atmosphere of his first three mixtapes and debut album. It is his shortest project to date, at only 6 tracks, a departure from the bloated 18 tracks of Starboy. While this would lead to the assumption that Tesfaye had created a project with none of the filler that plagued his last two albums, what seems to have happened is that he decreased both the amount of filler and quality on this project, leading to a record just as inconsistent as Beauty Behind The Madness and Starboy all while Tesfaye appears to be artistically stagnant.

           My Dear Melancholy, is best described as a breakup album, and its lead single and opening track “Call Out My Name” makes that clear from the start. It is one of the few tracks on the album that has Tesfaye exploring new lyrical themes, where he is having his heart broken, rather than the other way around as has been the status quo for him. His vocal performance is rich, and conveys perfectly that he isn’t over this girl, while lyrics like “I almost cut a piece of myself for your life” take on deeper meaning in the context of his failed relationship with Selena Gomez and her recent kidney transplant. Other lines like “Girl, why can’t you wait till I fall out of love” show a major change from The Weeknd that said he “Left my girl at home, I don’t love her no more” in 2011. While the lyrics are new ground for Tesfaye, the actual music is familiar, with the wails of agony over a bombastic instrumental feeling very reminiscent of 2015’s “Earned It” and the distorted vocals in the middle bearing a striking resemblance to “The Hills.” “Call Out My Name” is one of the standout tracks on this album, and while it does feel similar to music he put out on Beauty Behind the Madness it still stands as a highlight amongst The Weeknd’s already strong discography.

           The second song on the album is “Try Me”. One of The Weeknds least memorable songs, it features no new themes or instrumentation, instead being content to cover ground already thoroughly tread by House of Balloons and Echoes of Silence while being less lyrically and musically interesting than any of the songs from those mixtapes. Lyrically, “Try Me” comes very close to being a blatant rip off of “What You Need” from House of Balloons. In both songs, Tesfaye attempts to convince a girl to cheat on her man.  While “What You Need” featured clever word play like “Baby leave them high heel shoes/ cause I love it when you’re looking down at me, I’m looking up at you/ and I don’t give a damn shorty watch me knock your boots off.” “Try Me” ditches that in in favour of risk averse, lazy lyrics. For example, the line “You’re looking grown since the last time I looked at you/ It might have been, been about a couple months.” while not bad or poorly conceived, is uninspired. Musically, the song is also a step down from “What You Need”. Tesfaye’s vocals don’t match the song thematically. “Try Me” is a song about cheating, something that should be kept low key, yet the vocals feature The Weeknd’s signature attention grabbing falsetto as well as constant “Heys” and “Try Me’s” at the end of lines during the chorus. In comparison, “What You Need” has The Weeknd singing in a significantly lower tone, with much more breathy vocals, giving the impression that he’s whispering the track. The instrumental of “Try Me” also seems to be going against the theme, with a warbling synth line accentuated by trap base and hi-hats being loud and excessive. Taken on its own “Try Me” is an inoffensive filler track, however in the context of The Weeknd’s past work it’s clear that he didn’t attempt to push himself and chose the settle for average instead.

           The third song off “My Dear Melancholy,” is “Wasted Time” which takes its cues from Kiss Land rather than any of his mixtapes. The instrumental on this track is much more lowkey than the previous two songs, featuring a washed-out soundscape punctuated by a clockwork percussion courtesy of Skrillex. The vocals on this track start out strong and get stronger about 2/3rds of the way through when Tesfaye’s voice is distorted, leading to a haunting melody. Lyrically, the song is about Tesfaye wishing for a past lover after breaking up with her. While the lyrics are for the most part good, there are some particularly cringe-inducing lines such as “I hope you know this dick is still an option.” Or “I took the time to learn the way your body functions/ you were equestrian so ride it like a champion.” Which is not only needlessly sleazy, but a very poor half-rhyme as well.

           The fourth track on the album is “I Was Never There” with a feature by French producer and DJ Gesaffelstein. The song starts off with a loud, high pitched air horn sound effect which continues for about 30 seconds, and almost completely ruins the song from the onset. Once the intro is done, the first verse is nothing special with Tesfaye singing about how he is coping with his sadness by taking drugs and having sex. This goes into the repetitive, melodramatic chorus here he bemoans the fact that his ex acts like he was never with her to begin with. The song starts to turn itself around halfway through with a beat switch reminiscent of a song off House of Balloons or Kiss Land. This second half of the song is significantly better than the first half, but not quite good enough to save the song from being the worst on the album, if not one of the worst songs in Tesfaye’s discography.

           Next on the track list is “Hurt You” and again features Gesaffelstein as the lead producer. While the song is a step up from “I Was Never There” it still is not great. While the previous songs on the album were darker and seemed to be trying to emulate what can be found in Tesfaye’s early works, “Hurt You” feels like a reject from 2016’s Starboy most likely due to the presence of Daft Punk member Guy-Manuel de Homme-Christo as a producer. The song feels even more like a leftover from past projects due to the fact that Tesfaye’s vocals share the same rhythm and vocal progression as his verse on “Pray For Me” with Kendrick Lamar. This reuse of instrumental and vocal styles leads to “Hurt You” be an ultimately average track on Tesfaye’s least memorable album.

           The final track on the album is “Privilege”. It is my personal favorite track on the album and is the most faithful recreation of the sound found on Tesfaye’s first three mixtapes. Aside from its short length the song wouldn’t feel out of place on Echoes of Silence or House of Balloons in terms of both lyrics and production. Instead of the instrumental being over the top and melodramatic it is spacey and distorted, making Tesfaye’s voice the centerpiece of the song. His vocals are expressive without being excessive, and in the last half of the song he uses it as an instrument much like how he did for the back half of “Loft Music”. The chorus is incredibly effective and clever, with “Two red pills too take the blues away” making reference to The Matrix to show that Tesfaye is waking up from the dreamworld that was his relationship and returning reality, while also illustrating his use of drugs to cope with his sadness. This is ultimately the most clever piece of songwriting on the album.

           Despite having incredibly strong opening and closing tracks, My Dear Melancholy, feels like someone trying to recreate The Weeknd’s early projects without grasping what made them great in the first place. The production is over the top and bombastic when it should be atmospheric and low-key and the lyrics lack the cleverness and edginess that made The Weeknd exciting in the first place. What was supposed to be a return to form for Tesfaye ultimately feels stagnant and like its been done before. While there are some good moments on the album, such as “Call Out My Name” and “Privilege”, the rest is boring and uninspired if not outright bad. I would rate this album a 5/10.

[spartanburger]

Eris Redesign Pt1: Highering The Definitions

A while back, I decided to go through the process of re-designing the visuals of my characters since I got ahold of much higher definition textures. I had redone Vayu, which turned out well, but next up is Eris.

Vayu’s design was pretty easy to do, since I was satisfied with what I had for him and all I wanted was that in higher fidelity. I didn’t do any kind of work-in-progress text-walls for him like I’ve been doing recently because it was just a bunch of grind-work: going through and scratching in all the paint scratches and details into his paint job. The other characters will be more difficult as I will do far more to the character designs. It will not be as easy, and will require more learning and shtuff. As such, I will be splitting Eris’s redesign into three parts: 

Part 1 will all be about remaking the texture in high definition.

Part 2 will all be about texture revisions, and, most importantly, 3D model changes.

Part 3 will be special use scenarios and other... things.

Since this will be rather long, I’m going to put this behind a KeepReading line to prevent dashboard bludgeoning.

Eris’s original visual design is severely limited due to her model. Only being able to work with the default Quarian models meant that a lot of the more technical stuff I wanted to do couldn’t really be done. Eris was originally designed to have a sort of jumpjet mod on her suit. The best I could do at the time was modify the texture and emission layers to create what looked like the exhaust of a jet. The first thing I came up with was this:

I wasn’t satisfied with it, so I took another shot at it, this time looking at the mechanical flaps and interior of the exhaust ends of jet-fighters as a reference and came up with this:

I liked this design far more, so I incorporated it into the emissions layer to make it look like Eris had some sort of omni-tech jet thing on her hands and feet. This seems like something out of Iron Man, but the in-universe effectiveness of this would be more similar to a low power version of the jumpjets that battleframes used in the game FireFall. As an example, see this video from back when the game was actually good and had more than a dozen people playing it.

I am still salty over what happened to that game.

Anyway. At the same time as I was designing this, I had no idea what to do for her colors. Pretty much all of my characters’ color schemes are based on my ME3MP characters. But, Eris was made after many of the others, so I actually had to go back into ME3 to see if I could find a scheme for the FQE that I liked. I wasn’t able to come up with anything that instantly grabbed me and was also significantly different from my other characters. So, I threw some colors that I liked together and just saw what it did. This is what the OG Eris looked like:

I thought the scheme was a bit jarring, and it was too similar to the already heavily-red themes going on in the rest of the crew, so I decided to try a heavily blue theme, which is what led to the Eris designed I used for quite some time:

The first issue with updating this in HD is that the HD textures were not in a Source-Engine ready format. Mass Effect 3 does something similar to EVE Online when it comes to creating the custom skins for your MP characters. Instead of taking up disk space with new texture files for each possible color scheme, they create four main texture and material layers and layer them in engine:

1 - A diffraction layer, which has all the basic detail on it. This layer is almost entirely in black and white, however:

2 - A pattern layer. Where EVE does this many times over for both material properties, color, dust/dirt, and damage effects, ME3 has a single texture file that has the different patterns in different color channels. For example, if you go into the appearance editor in ME3MP, ‘None’ is simply not using the pattern texture at all. ‘Stripe 1′ is the red channel, ‘Stripe 2′ is the green channel, and ‘Camouflage’ is the Blue channel. Each one of these channels is just a black/white gradient, like an alpha channel, and the game engine just applies the pattern color based on the intensity of that channel overtop of the base diffraction layer. This is what the Camouflage layer looks like:

3 - A color or material texture. I honestly have no idea what this texture does. I originally thought it was color data, but I couldn’t discern what was in the various channels into the colors we might see in game. I suspected it was similar to the pattern layer, only with the different layers controlling the controls for Primary, Highlight, and Secondary color, but that doesn’t appear to be the case either. It’s possible that it’s a reflection material property controller, in which case, it’s almost entirely useless for use in Source Engine. This is what it looks like:

4 - A normal map. Nothing special here.

Source engine doesn’t work like this with textures. Source needs all your color and detail in a single texture file, and multiple patterns require multiple textures or skins. Here, there is no color data, just detail. I’d have to color it in completely manually, which (given my limited experience with Photoshop) is hard for me to do when going from white to colors. I didn’t encounter this problem when I redid Vayu because I did his texture based off of the HD Geth Trooper texture which already had color data, and it’s only the multiplayer or Player Character armors that have this unique thing going on. It’s an ingenious method of cutting back unnecessary texture data, but it just won’t work for Source.

For example, this is what the diffraction layer looks like on the model without any color modifications:

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it in some way. But, I won’t stand for what is essentially “default.”

An interesting note here is that, with the pure white/black design going on, you can see just how filthy the Quarian suits are. Goddamn suit rats.

No seriously

It’s utterly filthy

Here I thought the cloth parts could come off and be washed. Maybe even all the scientific advancements aren’t enough to scrub the stains of spacedirt. I dunno. Anyway, Eris is an engineer, so the dirt fits. Moving on.

I suspect that the reason why the original models that were ported to the Source engine had proper texture data was because they were ripped from civilians in the Campaign. One of the biggest differences between these two different textures is that the MP FQuarians have the plates on the sides of their chests (the ones that cover the outer and lower parts of the breasts) colored white instead of a dark grey and, even with the various appearance options, they always remain white. Similarly, the MP Quarians have more gold trim on them. Finally, the metal plates on the MP Quarians’ legs are darker, with only the very front being the regular shade of metal.

I want Eris to retain the generally blue color scheme, and she’s supposed to have a much brighter theme going on compared to some of the darker shades present in my other characters.

Remaking the yellow belt trim came out nicely. I changed the hue of the trim a bit to make it fit the gold trim already on the model. I’m not convinced yet if I want the gold trim on the model, since Eris isn’t exactly wealthy, but I do like the gold/blue scheme for her.

However, I encountered big problems getting the cloth colors to apply. My knowledge of how the layer blending modes work in Photoshop is limited, so I don’t know how they work on a technical level, but my usual method of using color or hue blending modes to change the color, and multiply or overlay blending to darken didn’t to work as well as I’d like. If I just take the original texture I did for Eris, scale it up to 4k resolution, and slap it on top with the multiply blend mode, it works pretty good. However, if I did it that way, it would mean that the majority of my process for creating characters would be making the color pattern from the old 1024x1024 textures and applying it on top of the 4096x4096 texture, instead of just coloring the 4096x4096 pattern. I would prefer the latter.

I tried some more complex layering and I may have gotten somewhere using three layers: One on color, one on multiply, and one on overlay. This gave her blue pants:

I wasn’t completely satisfied, but even after trying a few other things, I couldn’t get it to come out how I wanted. So, I decided to use the longer method of using the old texture as a color layer, preserving the detail of the HD texture but with the exact color data of the new texture. This means that, in the future, if I ever want to create the texture for a new character, I’ll have to rip the old low-def textures, make some color modifications to them, and then layer those on top of the HD texture.

Anyway, I made some minor adjustments to tidy some shtuff up, and then came to the non-cloth part of the suit. In the original, low-definition texture, this was covered by a hexagon pattern. The HD texture still has the pattern, but it’s incredibly faint. My layering brought colors onto the HD texture, but it couldn’t brighten details that were already really dark. So, I created my own hexagon overlay texture thing and started using it to brighten the pattern up. The way I made it means that I essentially have to erase the pattern wherever the hexagon pattern is not supposed to show up. I chose to just place the pattern first before I erased parts to fit.

...Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was testing out this method and ended up giving Eris a hexagon-covered butt.

I copied the hex pattern wherever it was needed, warping the layer to fit in certain areas, and then did some extra bits to fill in any areas that were still missing. This came out really well, and I could change the intensity of the pattern depending on how much I wanted.

The last bit was material stuff. Source engine needs the phong map (the map that determines how much light reflects, where it reflects more than others, and how it reflects) to be in the alpha channel of the Normal map, which didn’t have anything by default. I pulled on of the channels from the texture layer I couldn’t identify that looked like a phong map and used that one. I also updated the emission layer to ensure that the face glow and the mouthpiece light still lit up. Finally, I had it all together.

The left is the recreation with all the High Definitions, and the right side is the old one. 

Right, that’s done. Now on to Blender for part 2.

[apdo703]

Assignment 2

Jamie Wiedmann

Lighting is everything in an image, it establishes location, are you outside or inside, it establishes time of day, is it midday or nighttime, is the sun rising or setting, it can establish time of year, the weather. Lighting transforms the mood and tone of an image and the emotional response it evokes, just as the lighting of an establishment can transform it, for example, from a brunch place to a dim, candlelight dinner. Outdoors, dim lighting can turn a beautiful nature scene into one full of darkness and shadows. Lighting determines the entire mood of the image as the colors we see themselves can also change. Lower light situations do not illuminate every detail of an image, and it can contort colors into appearing darker than they are, while bright lights and colors are loud and busy. Light can also tell your eyes where to look in an image, much like a spotlight on a stage follows the person the audience should be looking at.

Because of this, light is tricky to work with, especially when you, the photographer, do not have control over it. Light can conceal details of an image by shining, or being focused elsewhere. Often times lights cue where the viewer should be looking, tricking them into not paying attention to the rest of an image, or the viewer simply may not be able to make out any details that are in the dark. Sometimes this can come in handy for a photographer who wants to manipulate lighting and exposure, if there is noise or insignificant details that draw away from the main focus, darkness can be used to hide the imperfections and draw the viewer to the focus of the image. I believe the analogy that light can reveal the truth does apply to photography, but I don’t think, in the case of photography, that it has to have a negative connotation, light is the most powerful tool a photographer can use, but that doesn’t always mean more is better, too much light can make everything appear washed out, also concealing details.

Natural lighting has always been my favorite, simply because it is natural. I feel like natural lighting grounds the image, preserves an element of truth. Even if the lighting is not perfect, it reflects the current situation. Natural lighting is also ever changing, it is hard to find the same exact effect twice, it is very organic. I would prefer editing the brightness, highlights, and exposure using software than adding a flash and unnatural light to an image.

For me, side light was the most difficult because it was hard to find the balance of light coming from the side and causing enough of a shadow, but then knowing the difference between an image with shadows and an image with side lighting because they are often the same thing.

I agree with the concept that there is a position of power when taking photographs. If the photographs have a sort of consciousness themselves, in turn they can each have their own view on the world, just as all people see things differently. Photographs can be manipulated in size, shape, color, and focus. Objects in the photo can be retouched or altogether removed; the photographer can manipulate objects in the field as well, changing a person’s position or an objects location. The photographer has the ability to make the viewer see something the way he or she sees it, so I do think Sontag’s statement is true.

My interpretation of Sontag’s proposal that photographs democratize experiences is that through photography we can catalogue the world. Every thing, place, person can exist as a photo, as a physical copy or an image online. Capturing the light and transposing it into a 2D, flat image, making it easily accessible, compact, and visible. However just because photographing objects or people ‘catalogues’ them in a similar way does not mean that all experiences themselves are equal, only the images of them are equal.

Artificial- I was in New York a couple days this week and I figured what better place to find artificial lighting! I originally simply picked the subway station because it’s underground and is entirely artificial light and because I had seen some creative photos of underground subway stations. I tried a number of different angles and object for this picture but when the train pulled in I thought that would be an interesting background since it spanned the entire width of the frame, changing the landscape entirely. It also gives a sense of motion without being blurry, and the metal causes the light to be reflected in so many different ways.It was hard to avoid getting a streak of white light at the top of the sign but in the end it added a soft glow to the letters. I put the image in black and white because it provided a starker contrast between light and dark, made the light parts look much brighter and unified them, instead of having slightly different colored light areas. It also made the dark part darker and reduced a lot of background noise.

Back light- My inspiration for this picture actually came from the mother of one of my high school classmates who is a really talented photographer, she would take pictures of people during sunset and the light would turn their figures into a silhouette and they were always so beautiful. I got my sister to model for me and tried to create my own version of her photographs. As it turned out, perhaps because of the time of day, it was still a little early, there was enough light in the sky from the other direction that you can still see her features such as the color of her clothes and her facial features, I like that her figure is darkened but you can still make some of these things out. I told her to hold her shirt out, I had no idea how it would turn out, but I like that the light shines through the fabric of her shirt, and gives the outline of her body a glow, it’s like two different effects of light in one. I left it in color because of the pretty background colors and the bright contrast between them and her red shirt.

Shadow- I took this photo because the sun was at the perfect height in the sky where it made it look like the shadow was splitting the scene in half. The busy, colorful skyline is still lit while the quieter, darker road is in the shadow. I definitely wanted to keep this image in color because there are so many different, bright colors on the buildings and in this cause I think that enhances the lighting even more than if the image were in black and white, whereas it is often the other way around.

Natural- I always loved the skyline of Manayunk so I went to the trail Monday morning when the light was still soft and tried to get some good natural light images. I like the solid colors of the building walls and how the early morning light makes them appear brighter and cleaner in a way. I chose to have the buildings at the bottom of the image so they would frame the rest of it while simultaneously displaying the sky as as clear and expansive, also to show the gradient of color, from darker blue to lighter blue. I kept this image in color because of the beautiful blue color of the sky and the glow, white color of the buildings was exactly what I was looking for when going for natural light.

Side- I took this picture because from where I was standing the light was shining from the side, and there was a noticeable shift from day to night all in one scene. Again here I used the light to divide the image in half, the left and lower parts looks like nighttime while the right and upper parts still have daylight present. The streetlights of houses are on and the headlight on the cars, but the tops of the buildings have a soft glow that fades as it goes own, casting small shadows, and the sky is still a bright blue. The sun is coming from such an angle that you can’t see the physical area where it is setting, but you see both day and night in one image, without the area in between. I left this one in color as well because of just how light the sky was and the soft, warm, glow of the streetlights, the darkness of the buildings provided a sharp enough contrast to see the light coming from the side.

[adicag-blog]

Photo editing software for Windows 10 to edit pictures

Enhance an image is great with the photo editing software for Windows 10

Get more information about sharpen a photo or write text in a photo with the photo editing software for Windows 10 free download or convenient photo editing software for Windows 10 for Computer and pros to practical invert images. Photo editing software for amateurs or software to edit a photo to rotate pictures and batch processing. Download this photo editing software for Windows 10 for speedy and simple soften pictures.

Taking beautiful pictures for a blog site to one thing as well as that is technique. Emphasize to take 7 pictures every single hour no issue when you are away and about or apartment sitting at the bed analysis. Photo editing software for Windows 10 performs possess a few of the attributes is actually well recognized for, which happens rather handy when you have actually chose you have actually like to attempt your give on one thing more high end than print photo album and blur photo. Photo editing software for Windows 10 can easily additionally bring in freeze frames coming from video recording, alongside various reports. As well as when you are actually experiencing a bit careless or even it is actually just ordinary uninformed regarding how to utilize a few of the resources, a helper can assist you adjustment the essentials just like lighting fixtures, concentration, color, as well as rotation of graphics. For them that like their pictures in wider screen editions, the software function assists you very easily developed photos to make a breathtaking picture. As well as when it's opportunity to unveil off your photography skills, you may pick amongst the photograph plan design templates to instantly publish them in a details size.

Photo editing software for Windows 10 to brighten pictures

Rotate pictures or print photo album is user friendly with the photo editing software for Windows 10 or software to edit photos free download

This photo editing software for Windows 10 is most effectively for excited pupils with a lot of attend their workflow to figure out the also technical features that would certainly scare initial chance picture editing and enhancing consumers. It likewise happens complete along with a full circle scenery plan. Possibly the gleaming gem in the plan will be the attractive skin effect, which takes red spots and also evens out your skin tone. While there's no automatically different colors repair option quite necessary to repair the poor illuminating most electronic video cameras document, there are still the basic attributes of draw in a photo. One of the most well-known misinterpreted parts of electronic photography is what occurs once you take the shot in truth modifying your pictures. Here we will cover some ideas for editing your photos, from the essentials like insert people into photo as well as flip photo, through a lot more complicated activities. The cropping device permits you to change the dimension of your image, as well as additionally to alter the facet proportion. For instance, you can chop an image from a rectangular form to a round form. There are several reasons you would certainly want to cropping, consisting of for posting in different formats and also aspect ratios. Compared to the initial, I have chopped the image with photo editing software for Windows 10 to get rid of the lightning component of the right-hand side of the pic and recomposed making use of the guideline of one-third. It makes the lightning screw more the focus of photograph. You might wonder why I did not simply compose correctly when making the picture. Well, in this situation, I was actually doing an extensive presence photo shooting without a tripod, so had the video camera balanced on the edge of the sidewalk for stability. That significantly minimal my capability to perfectly mount the minute, so I just shot broader, knowing I had the ability to chop the shot properly right after the fact. In the two cases, cutting out is very simple and it is just includes you selecting the cropping technique and also then picking the location you wish to maintain with your PC mouse. You apply the adjustments as well as your new cropped photo is prepared to go. Many experts are often make researches for the photo editing software to edit photos, but every photographer has to know for himself which is the photo editing software for Windows 10 download. Download now this photo editing software free download for starters and experienced with many powerful features or smart photo editing software for experienced to very easy improve an image. Photo editing software for Windows 10 for professionals or software photo editor to blur an image or warp photo. Free download photo editing software for experienced and program to edit photos to invert photos or photo solarization.

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Among my individual casual annoyances in photography is when the horizon contour in a photo is not degree. In some cases if we are taken up in the second, this fundamental regulation is neglected however the excellent news is that enhancing your shots with the photo editing software for Windows 10 to make them grade is also really simple. Adjusting the video camera at the corner of the pier indicated that the photo was not degree that is specifically notable to the vision when the image has actually a plainly defined horizon line, like the sea. A focusing device is segment of the crop tool, as well as you can simply just rotate the photo to match. When you make use of the level device, a grid will turn up to aid you get the positioning correct. Level a photo is an actually simple task that will certainly take just a few seconds, causing a lot more visually hitting the spot picture. Often times if we make a photo, components of the photo might just finish up being normally shadier than we want. We refer to the less colored locations of the picture as darkness, and the colorful spots of the shot as highlights. Contrast has to do with highlighting the variation between the lighting and also darker components of the picture. Enhancing the comparison of a photograph can significantly boost the graphical effect in which had, by creating the boundaries between those dark as well as light parts clearer. Color adjusting is another important piece related to the photo editing software for Windows 10. We can readjust photo color in all kind of methods, starting with altering the total warmth of the picture just like just how blue or green it looks, to independently altering the hue as well as interpenetration of certain colors contents of a photograph. I simply just intend to talk about some very simple color scheme corrections anyone can easily use to make your photos simply just a little much more creatively highly effective. The fastest way to readjust the coloring related to a picture is simply with the color tone tool from the photo editing software for Windows 10. That transforms the appearance related to every color or texture in a photograph to make it essentially condensed. As with many modify, the secret is definitely to locate an ideal balance way too much shading the images often tends to seem instead not naturally made. Shading photos can easily be very useful, and also certainly black and bright white is an excellent choice for every type of situations, in particular, portraits, and also some garden views. More info to resize photos or scaling photos with the photo editing software for Windows 10 download and powerful photo editing software for Windows 10 for PC for pros to comfortable blur images or very easy photo draw. Easy invert pictures with a photo editing software for Windows 10 for professionals to copy and paste objects in a photo. Free download photo editing software for Windows 10 for experienced or edit an image software to sharpen a picture or photos color correction.

Flip pictures is very easy with the photo editing software for Windows 10

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In some cases there certainly can be a thing within a picture that you definitely do definitely not intend to be right there, like a bothersome beauty spot on someone else's nose. That is simple to clear away in all of the major photo editing software. It is really quick and easy to erase any type of things taken away a photo but the photo editing software for Windows 10 works very well on distinct, small-sized things that are certainly been around by uniform colors. This is due to the fact that the heal tool has to replace the area you wish to get rid of with another thing, and this functions finest when it has an area close by that looks similar. For instance, red point on a face is surrounded by a lot of in a similar way colored skin, so the recover device can easily compute what to replace the bright spot based on the bordering location. This specific is probably since the photo editing software for Windows 10 has to repair the area you will to take out together with another thing, as well as that function most ideal when it gets a field near that seems very same. Photo editing software for Windows 10 has turned into really complicated and powerful and it is actually possible to control images so they end up being completely various from the original. There actually are dozens of photo editing software and wide ranges of means of getting the very same or similar results. My objective most for a lot of images I upload process is normally to make them appear as all-natural as possible. I believe this is a superb point to begin, even when you wish to continue on and develop much more surreal appearing photographs. Hue range in a photo is among the main concerns. The human eyes are able to typically see a more comprehensive series of shade than your video camera able to make. The significance of photo editing and enhancing is the act of modifying a photograph, basically. Still, this is oversimplifying a subject that is very problematic. You can generally carry out basic picture editing strategies like photo printing rather easily and also promptly yet complex methods as well as digital editing and enhancing may need photo editing software for Windows 10 and also even more practical experience. Photo editing software is a gadget that anyone able to work with to manipulate and also boost pictures. Because images have an increasing variety of usages, more businesses are finding means to reuse images as well as make use of them on multiple networks.