#i wanted to post like 25 screenshots im sorry

[the-great-rat-attorney]

(sorry for so many images -- this is the shortest i could trim this exchange down without losing essential parts. i still cut out a ton of anxious ryuu faces as he frets over what to say. he was not this chill lol)

i'm obsessed with this moment. barok explains that the police report says there were items under the omnibus seat, and therefore if the compartment is now empty, there must have been evidence tampering. then he puts ryuu on the spot - the first of many tests he sets for ryuu in the next few trials. "did you see the items under the seat?"

as if that's not enough pressure, mcgilded piles on, demanding that ryuu tell everyone there was nothing under the seat when he looked.

the game lets you make your own choice here (tell the truth and support bvz, lie and support mcgilded, or say you don't know). i remember agonizing over it the first time. it really feels like deciding what kind of lawyer you want to be. the trial eventually continues the same way regardless, but different dialogue follows right after. bvz expects ryuu to lie, and declares ryuu even dumber than he looks if he says he doesn't know.

but if the player knows the truth and says it, bvz is shaken. he can't understand why ryuu is doing this... even though it's *exactly* how barok behaves in court himself. he will tell the court when the defence is right. imagine a Devious Nipponese being as honest and scrupulous as yourself, lord van zieks! imagine anyone, for that matter, standing across from you in court with the intention of helping you uncover the real truth!

as i said, if you pay attention in the following trials, barok follows this first test up with a LOT more. i think he's hoping to prove to himself that ryuu is nothing special and his existence doesn't require barok to question several aspects of his worldview. it... doesn't work ✨

[house-on-sand]

for the character ask game !!

26. What's something the character has done you can't get over? Be it something funny, bad, good, serious, whatever? - vic sage!

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now? - grant emerson!

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like? - jason todd!

6. What's something you have in common with this character? - conner kent!

23. Favorite picture of this character? - any or all of them!!

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character? - any or all of them!!

14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character. - helena bertinelli!! i'm curious

26. What's something the character has done you can't get over? Be it something funny, bad, good, serious, whatever? - vic sage!

vic is an odd duck in general with many unforgettable moments but the one thing he does that ill never be able to get over is how he responds when someone asks him who he is when he's out as the question

shit like that. he's so extra for this. he also sometimes leaves fucking. calling cards with a question mark on them and i cannot even begin to explain how funny that is to me. he even acknowledges it's a "cheap stunt" and he should probably not do that but yknow.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now? - grant emerson!

i can get you screenshots of my first impression of grant aksgsk

my first actual intro + thoughts on him

then like immediately after that. i knew right off the bat i was gonna be obsessed with him. something about his energy compelled me and now look where i am. the hyperfixation spiraled so now i care way too much about a character very few people have even heard of. honestly i just thought his powers were really cool and his role in zero hour was fucking nuts /pos + his vibes, like i said in the screenshots, were super relatable. that fact has not changed either, me n grant... we are the same tbh. for whatever that says about me my thoughts about him now? he drives me insane, i could write a whole essay on damage as a character and i still wouldn't say everything i want to. he's a tragic character who was forced into the role of a hero as a teenager because it was that or jail. he's got tons of parents and no parents at the same time. he's angry and people act like that's unreasonable and he's not allowed to be upset about his situation because he's expected to be a hero and learn how to control his powers and all this other shit all while his teammates and the public view him as this walking nuclear bomb that's too dangerous to be around. ill never be normal about him.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like? - jason todd!

i LOVE talking about his relationships with the other bats im so sorry but im insane about that and if i don't include it in something i write for him i fear I'll explode. i also love getting to write how emotional he is and how he thinks about himself because jason is so so influenced by his emotions and he's not just. Angry or mindlessly violent, he's got a much deeper nd intense range of emotions than that but people tend to take him at face value and don't realise that just because he seems angry bc he's lashing out or he's yelling or whatever doesn't mean he's actually angry. idk i love writing everything about him. as for smth i don't like when writing for him, i greatly dislike trying to write bruce in relation to jason bc i don't feel like i can capture bruce's character very well so he's There but for the most part it's just jason's thoughts abt him rather than them directly interacting. and this isn't so much something i hate while writing, but if i post something i don't like how anxious i feel abt how other people are gonna react to it bc not everyone sees him the way i do.

6. What's something you have in common with this character? - conner kent!

we share a punk aesthetic!! in different ways n subcultures n shit but we do!!! also... specific mental health issues lmao. conner is STRUGGLING in superboy 94 and one of the things we share is during the end of his relationship with knockout where he tries to kill the both of them. but yeah. we're both incredibly mentally ill and that's okay

23. Favorite picture of this character? - any or all of them!!

IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED! (you're getting a selection sorry!) jason:

these panels specifically from utrh

these are also technically part of utrh but they're from the batman annual after the arc technically finished but i fucking love all of them.

and of course, the jaybin era! these r my favourites atm bc he's so tiny in the first one and i love baby metalhead jason todd!!

grant:

these panels from the last issue of his solo!!! im insane about him breaking free from the virus and his little mustache n piercing at the very end. he's so dorky n cute there.

and these ones! love these ones so much. just. the very first one is great because he looks so happy and free.

and finally these ones. i love the art here but most importantly i love that roy is giving grant a space to yell and feel and say the things he wishes he could've said to his "dad"

vic:

he's so gender in these ones

conner:

(bonus: my favourite panel so far of ted kord bc everyone needs to see it)

im not even gonna lie if i heard this man say holy cool cookie cow id be asking him out on the spot that shit is so silly akahsk i want him so bad.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character? - any or all of them!!

jason - he picks up new skills fairly easily and is largely self taught when it comes to some of the different languages hes learned and the piano. he taught himself how to play piano just because he could and he was bored. (ik somewhere? him playing piano is canon but for me it's always real n true) & that his earth 2 counterpart, if he had one, goes to college and does a dual major in english & social work with a minor in criminal justice + goes on to get his jd and take the bar so he can still help people without being a vigilante anymore. plus it showcases how fucking smart my boy is! tied into this one, a funny hc i enjoy is regular earth jason being able to pass the bar (bc he's SMART and he will COMMIT to the bit) so now the young adult crimelord/vigilante can now also technically practice law. it's just so funny to meeee and he deserves that grant - that arsenal is his favourite hero! & this is less a hc and more an au but in my heart there exists a world where alan scott and j'onn acted as grant's mentors a little more bc i dig alan's interaction with him before his trial and every interaction he had with j'onn was great imo idk i would've loved to see it conner - im a grey eyed conner truther ngl! rlly vibe w the hc that even tho he's supposed to be clark's clone n he looks a lot like him, he does have some of lex's features. i also hc him as having freckles on his shoulders that he loves because they're something all his own.

14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character. - helena bertinelli!! i'm curious

oh god i am a terrible person for fashion questions but i knew the exact vibes i had in mind for her when i saw this question!!! helena bertinelli would SLAY, absolutely devour a fucking corporate goth aesthetic. & i'll have to rb this with some references images bc i hit the limit! just kind this more professional, less obvious goth vibe. get some purple in there as a reference to the huntress costume... if she does makeup? (keep in mind i do Not do makeup) maybe a nice like dark/deep red lipstick... maybe even like a dark purple? idk i can see this specifically in my head. definitely leaning more towards an androgynous vibe. she's very clothes have no gender to me. sometimes doing a more feminine vibe if she's feeling it.

[wildstar25]

i don't know any of your ocs besides catgirl from your videogames so 8, 10, and 30 from the oc questions for her :3

Lmao thats fair, I don't really post about anyone other than her... the hyper fixation is far to strong (and its easier to take screenshots then it is to um... draw an entire comic series or write a VN from scratch) 8.Do complex puzzles intrigue or frustrate them?

Intrigue! Arsay loves a good puzzle if she has time to mull over it or can try things over and over again. Granted she will inevitably get a tad frustrated if she feels like she can't make forward progress after enough time, but that frustration is a motivator to keep at it and start trying something different!

10.What age do they most want to be right now?

Arsay is currently 25 ( technically 30 but 5 years was spent in a stasis she has no clue about) and is fine with it! She's far happier now than she ever was as a kid, and she would rather be sent to super hell then be a moody teenager again.

30.What would they do if they knew it would be forgiven?

Honestly kinda stumped on this one so im gonna twist the question up a little, sorry.

Less so "forgiven" and more "not judged" - Arsay would have been a little more insistent that the scions remain "the scions" at the end of endwalker. However valid it was to disband the group at the time (seriously they were amassing far too much political influence as a private organization) the Scions of the Seventh Dawn was Arsay's family and their base at the Rising Stones was home to her. She eventually grew to accept the choice and found a new home in Old Sharalyan but that was after a year of her regretting not speaking her mind when she had the chance. I think if she had let people in on her worries, she could have avoided a whole lot of mental anguish.

its kinda a non issue at this point tbh as it seems the scions have unofficially reunited anyways

[anonymousad]

Just learned about your blog, and I have been SO tired of keeping quiet about my issues with Harlan. I was in the Invictus server for about 2 years and I saw so much. I'm going to bullet point what I can remember:

-Harlan has repeatedly posted screenshots of negative reviews/critiques without redacting usernames, despite being advised that it could lead to fans dogpiling

-He has shared screenshots of emails from his family where they said negative things about him, which is wildly inappropriate for a creator to share with his fans

-Some of the perks to being an Invictus patreon member is getting weekly Malevolent episodes (which then get put together as a single longer public episode) and typically an episode ends with a choice and patreon members at certain tier and above can vote on which option is chosen, like a choise your own adventure story. Back in October someone voiced their disappointment in not getting to vote in the patreon poll because Harlan closed it on a Friday instead of a Sunday as normal, he went on an emotional spiral where he lashed out at fans, said "anyone who is unhappy being a patreon doesn't have to be a patreon", and tried to guilt trip people by bringing up his son.

-Other perks of higher patreon tiers include a personal message from a character of your choosing at the $25 tier and a personal thank you video from Harlan and Jo at the $50. I know of multiple people who paid at the $25 tier for months, a few who paid for a whole year at once, who didn't receive these rewards until they reached out and contacted Harlan themselves, months after they had paid for the tier. And they did have to be the ones to message Harlan, when it was brought to his attention that there were many people waiting for their rewards he didn't do any legwork himself to find out who's had never been fulfilled, which is extremely unprofessional.

-Everything up to now has just been the things I saw as a member of the server with access to the patreon channels. I'm friends with an ex-mod, and her getting kicked from the mod team was my sign to give up on the server and finally leave it. I hadn't posted anything in there in months, and I didn't make any sort of "im leaving" post, I just dipped. Apparently they keep track of who's left the server, because Harlan DM'd me saying he was sorry to see me go and he was there if I ever wanted to talk. When I didn't respond overnight, he followed up with "Well, if you ever want to hear my side of this thing with [former mod], I'll be here 🙂". I still don't understand what his intention was in messaging me, but I was curious so I engaged him in conversation and he sent me a screenshot of the message he had sent her explaining why she was being removed from the mod team. I just want to point out that I never asked to see any screenshot. When I asked if he had ever established mod expectations he tried to pass me off to another Invictus admin, despite the fact he was the one who contacted me and I was no longer a member of the server. I told him that he needed better boundaries in his interactions towards fans (or ex-fans in my case) and that there was no reason for him to have messaged me. Instead of apologizing or responding in any way, he simply blocked me.

I am aware of other things that have happened in the server since I left, but I don't want to share stories I haven't been given the ok to bring up or talk about things I've only heard about secondhand. I've been uncomfortable with the way Harlan publicly interacts with people for a long time now, and I kept quiet because I didn't want to start drama but at this point it feels irresponsible to not talk about it.

this anon says they saw a lot over the 2 years they were in the server, so I would like to say upfront that I don't know how much of that is things that have stopped and been addressed and how much has continued more recently.

some of these points seem more related to other aspects than the discord, like apparent issues with the Patreon supporter relationship side of things.

[limpfisted]

#LIMPFISTED. LUCIFER GOT DOWN ON HIS KNEES AND PRAYED TO GOD, HIS FATHER, THE FATHER OF ALL THE ANGELS. HE WANTED PSALMS AND SONGS AND SUNSETS. HE WANTED DREAMS AND FAIRY TALES, A PARADISE LOST, BECAUSE IT HAD NOT YET BEEN MADE. HE WANTED ADVENTURE, HE WANTED PRAISE, HE WANTED JUSTICE, HE WANTED POWER—AND IN GOD’S DEFENSE, HE GOT IT AS THE GATE LOCKED BEHIND HIM.

DID IT HURT, WHEN YOU FELL FROM HEAVEN? WHEN YOUR FATHER WOULD RATHER BANISH YOU THAN LOOK YOU IN THE EYE?

THE CLOCK HAS STRUCK MIDNIGHT, THE SHARDS OF THE GLASS SLIPPER CUT INTO YOUR SAWED OFF HEEL, THE UGLY DUCKLING HAS EMERGED FROM HIS SHELL AND AWAKENED A BLACK SWAN.

What are you waiting for?! LET’S START OUR HAPPILY EVER AFTER!

LET’S MAKE A PACT !!!!

indie wyll ravengard: mobile doc / print layout doc. herbert sherbert, 25+, they/them. brief rules under the cut.

screenshot base credit: @/laceratiio (follow them we stan!)

20+ only. don’t be nasty, don’t be gross, i like horror, i like dark themes, i don’t like Bad things, but also sometimes bad things are a part of the characters trauma and we can talk about it and write about it! also: i sometimes write toxic relationships/situationships between consenting adults. there are sometimes age gaps, wyll is 24 on this blog, but age gaps happen, don’t follow if you don’t like it man.

i like a lot of your ooc posts if we’re mutuals! tell me to knock it off if u dont like it! however, if u like all my posts, i will be ur online rp bestie and personal court jester (tho we will be keeping safe professional online boundaries in place lol, i want us to be mutual fans of each other’s art, we do NOT have to share personal details.)

discord i only give out rarely. tumblr ims are best. i love to plot, i love to talk, hit up my ims!

i write about bodily harm and canon characters trauma! all astarion trauma is tagged astarion tw! all suggestive content is tagged suggestive te, nsft, and nsfw! ask me to tag whatever u like, but i may forget! oopsie doopsies! give me the benefit of the doubt.

MY ICONS ALL HAVE A BIG CLOSE-UP OF AN EYE. IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE ICONS, JUST DON’T FOLLOW. I’m not tagging it, so sorry pal.

my wyll is transmasc and non-binary, he/him, he identifies as “a blade”, you can use any “gendered terms” for him!

alright i said this was gonna be brief. jesus christ.

[chenyuvale]

Choose violence 1-25

all in one? ok you asked for it buddy

1) the character everyone gets wrong

- most if not all of the men, even itto he is Not a himbo im sorry hes literally a twunk,, or as much of a twunk as hoyo can make them hes also jus awful in general 2) a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom - my top fave is baizhu and he's 100% a switch hes both at the same time so this is difficult for me to argue-- alhaitham and ayato however !!! paragraph incoming sorry--

alhaitham is 100% a bottom not because he wants to be but because he doesnt wanna put any work into the act, he just wants others to do things to him, others doing the work for him basically dfsfsd so ofc that reflects here ( also flushed alhatiham expression >>>)

ayatoooo isss s s s i think also a switch but i dont think too much abt it sjhdf he could be a service top and a power bottom at the Same Time 3) screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

-- every diluc x fem!reader im sorry they are all so bad and also the unironic use of "yandere!(guy)" is,,, never done right or like,,, isnt good sdfsdf at all 4) what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

-- there was this artist i found bc i wanted to look for more diluc artists, right, as one does ! and then after like a couple weeks of tolerating the chiluc bc it started to get on my nerves, they posted a komi cant communicate diluc au thing, and in the caption they had literally said "i thought it fitting considering diluc deserves to be worshipped <3" liKE DID YOU WATCH THE SHOW???? diD YOU PLAY THE GAME?? ?? ? diluc doesnt deserve that nor Want that and the show character komi has a mental illness that makes it awful its not something to be romantisiced at All and they were romantisicing it AND diluc like aughhhh

5) worst discord server and why

-- main genshin server or the keqing main one bc i think the main one jus is Hoyolab part two (derogatory) and the keqingmains is just meta fighting over numbers n shit orz orz orz

6) which ship fans are the most annoying?

-- any and all popular ships but mostly the popular mlm shippers bc they are,,, practically if not Exactly ,,fujos basically (the popular wlw shippers are either Cis Het Men or also sapphic ppl 7) what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them? -- itto for sure, tho the more i saw abt canon the more i hated him, i jus saw a buncha fanon that i hated so sdfsdf 8) common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about -- most if not all of them, most specifically kazuha/beidou family and zhongli/xiao family i fucking Hate that SO much because WHERE did it come from????? the infantalising short guys bitches??? fucking stop it

9) worst part of canon - ugh too much to fit here it could be a2 hour long video essay atp but mostly the colorism fucking Sucks 10) worst part of fanon -- also a lot, but the part that irks me the most is that No One thinks outside of the box, and im not pretending like im special or anything bc of certain things but like,,, at the mere mention of a rarepair they just go "oh no but i like (popular ship) better!" like ughhhhh stop it think differently 11) number of fandom-related words you've filtered - too many to count on twitter but here ive been spacing it out ;> 12) the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them - baizhu for SUREEEE and like look at the everything about him literally WHY after his release whyyyYyyYyyyYY is he STILLLLL unpopular why is he STILL lacking in fancontent im ehrgehrgeehrgere upsET 13) worst blorboficiation - childe,,,,, who made him a fuckboy 14) that one thing you see in fics all the time - they/them pronouns for baizhu ( not a bad thing but not rlly a good thing im getting sick of it a little bit ) 15) that one thing you see in fanart all the time - diluc with a Bow WHY 16) you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc) - a LOT a fucking LOT mostly ships and the Collective Dynamic of the ships bc aughhh they are so boriinnnnnnggggggggggggggggg g g g g g and again the "found family" that comes out of NO WHERE

17) there should be more of this type of fic/art

-baizhluc 18) it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

-baizhu,,,,,, 19) you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

-,,,,,, tighnari-- and i used to absolutely HATE him bc the voice was so just IRked me so Badly it rubbed me the complete wrong way and ruined the character for me, yes i play in eng and ever since the recasting my view of him is much nicer now he doesnt irk me anymore 20) part of canon you found tedious or boring

-ayatos story quest he deserved better still 21) part of canon you think is overhyped

-,,,,,raiden and yae content 22) your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

-- the fact that diluc is 1) BANNED from snehnyaha 2) got WASTED in snezhnya 3) was part of a secret underground organization WE STILL know NOTHING about??? it was never brought up again and 4) Killed his Own Father out of his misery 23) ship you've unwillingly come around to

-uhhhh is i bad i dont know, 24) topic that brings up the most rancid discourse -- "are kaeya and diluc brothers " and to that i say they are exes fuck both sides of the argument 25) common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

--"genshin fans need to touch grass" "genshin fans are the worst fandom ever" literally look at every other fandom, any big hit anime fandom ,, (ahem mha) are like 100x worse then genshin fans, like yeag we're ruthless sometimes sure and will chew each other out thanks to most of the fanbase being on twitter of all places but we wont put glass in cupcakes

[putridweedstenchincarpet]

You're Always on my Mind

I was involved with this older girl I mean she was like 24 or 25 I don't really remember it was a hazy time man, but she was hooked to coke like all the time and I mean I was one of many guys with her y'know and I understood my place with her, I was just a guy and she was a girl, one day we just stopped talking which is fine by me I don't care we had what I guess what a breakup argument or whatever (which she still posts, she loves this one screenshot her: im sorry me: no youre not you just want me to forgive you) three or four weeks later my mom dies, really a shocker yknow, she overdosed, but she calls me like two days after my mom died I was inundated with calls that week so getting a call from a unsaved number wasnt shocking but it was her, I picked up and she asked if I wanted to go to the American Football show with her and to go back to the apartment she was airbnbing at the time, all I could reply with was "my mom died a couple days ago" and the whole vibe of the conversation just turned empty, she spoke to me with what I assumed and felt like a ghastly sorry, I got off the phone with her and started sobbing I am not a crier at all, I mean I was taught that shit was gay (not really in that manner but you understand what I mean) but idk I don't check her account but it came recommended to me, she has like 12k followers on twitter but she posted like screenshots on screenshots of our conversations (short little things stuff you could just quote or would seem relatable) and she had posts about this call and other things in her life like rehab and shit like that. I don't know I just need to say this

[runolllo-fanboygirl]

annoying revali anon again... im sorry but I want to ask more, your post about link's age was really thoughtful, even though most of the info is in the game I didn't think about it and I never saw other people talk about it (even if so many people are always aking guesses about link's age!) so I want to ask, do you know Revali and Sidon's age too... please and thanks...

Ok, Sidon is easy but Revali is a tough one! And I don’t have the time to source properly. I’ve actually been writing a post about the ages of all the relevant BOTW characters (that’s why I had this info at hand for that other Link post too!) but adding quotes, screenshots, etc. takes a lot of time.

So here is a very informal answer until I manage to compile everything:

- Adult Sidon is, canonically, older than 100 (obviously XD) but younger than 130, I estimate around 110ish since we know he’s much younger than Rivan (who’s over 130). Sidon is also canonically considered more on the “young adult Zora” side than on the “middle aged Zora” side (for comparison, Bazz and Gaddison are confirmed middle aged). Zora a bit younger than 100 are more or less already considered adults or late teens (like Dunma) so Sidon might had been an adult for a while. I hope this made sense lol.

Regarding the current twitter drama: Zora mature in a very different way, much slower in general, and not necessarily perfectly proportionally slower than the other races. You can’t equate Zora age to Hylians, don’t ask “would that make Sidon around 23 in human age” that makes no sense... he’s a +100 young adult by Zora standards because he’s a Zora.

- Revali’s most likely just barely an adult, and somewhere around the same age as Link (17-19). For reference, this is everything I had to say about Link’s age / LINK /. Anyway back to Ravioli Pasta Boy, we can only make a good guess about him being around that awkward age between teen and adult. I’ll try to explain as short as possible:

- I’ll start saying that, unlike the case of the Zora, Rito age and life expectancy are the same as for Hylians. We can infer this from Revali’s own dialogue in the Champion’s Ballad, as well as from Creating a Champion. The book also tells us that Kass is considerably older than Teba, but we have nothing to compare them to Revali, that I have found. While the Zora talk a lot about their age (since it’s relevant to Link’s past and his old bonds with them) we have no numbers to compare for the Rito, sorry. STILL, go on and read:

- Revali uses “boku” to refer to himself in Japanese. It would be very awkward for anyone other than a male child/teen to use “boku”. An adult man would use boku in some settings, not in the way Revali does in my opinion (I explain why on this other post) but some people disagree... so I won’t say this is conclusive evidence on it’s own BUT I can stack this hint with the next few ones:

- Urbosa's Diary: “Revali is of the youngest Rito generation” (the diary has different wording in the different localizations but ultimately says that).

- Urbosa’s diary putting Zelda, Link, Revali and Mipha in the same age group (yes, Mipha too, don’t ask me I didn’t write this game lol)

- Revali’s considerably shorter than the other Rito adults (and I’m not even talking about Teba who is actually taller than the other Rito men).

- Other more speculative hints: 

- Revali still has the same face markings as the Rito children. It might be just a design choice but why not mention it. A lot of the stuff in this game is very deliberate, so yeah.

- Revali’s emotional immaturity; 

- The fact that he was designed to be Link’s rival (stated in Creating a Champion); 

- The fact he didn’t have any descendancy, unlike Urbosa or Daruk, even though he loves his homeland and his people so much, he gets along with children, and all he ever wanted was to see the Rito thrive. One would think, he didn’t have the time to have a family :(

- The age gap between Revali and Teba matching the trend of the other co-pilots in which one is an older adult (Urbosa, Daruk, Teba and Sidon) and the other a youngster (Riju, Yunobo, Revali and Mipha). Creating a Champion says Yunobo is “a young adult Goron still growing” and I think all of us can see how that’s very possibly the same case with Link, Revali and Mipha.

- Creating a Champion also highlights how adult/big/confident Teba is that he isn’t bothered at all by criticism, being mostly aware of his own shortcomings, feeling no shame and just working hard. A big contrast with Revali, who while being just as hard working, is a bit of a bratty kid and an overachiever who hates being caught in what he considers “a moment of weakness” (a moment of shame). So, again, deliberate decisions while designing the characters.

I might be missing something big but that’s all for now! I’m confident most of the facts are correct (please notice that I mentioned when I make estimations and when I speculate, versus when I’m giving actual canon data and quoting!). Again, I haven’t put together all my sources yet, the quotes are from memory an paraphrased, double-check before quoting me on this ;D

Also! Do what you want with this info, make your own conclusions. Link and Sidon’s age frames are a bit more restrictive and Zelda literally turned 17 the day of the Calamity (I think the only character with her age set in stone lol), but otherwise the game and book would be like “eh, Riju was designed to look around 12 but Gerudo mature faster... Paya was designed to be around Link’s age, between 18-20... Purah is, uh, 120, kinda......... Link found the Master Sword when he was 12 or 13, maybe........¿¿?...?” like, what do you mean, does Link not fcking remember if he got the sword when he was 12 or 15 lmao!!!! Assholes!!! XD  

So like, yeah ahahahha. You think Revali is 17? The game says Sure Why Not. You say Revali’s 24 and a short king? Perfectly possible too honestly. We stan short King Revali, wow much sass in such smol birb. Big bow go brrrr

Last thing about Teba and Revali because I wanted the Age of Calamity SPOILERSSS at the end: 

 - In Age of Calamity *SPOILERSSS*  Teba’s dad instincts kick in on a couple of occasions... there are many battle combos I haven’t seen yet, but at least once Teba goes to Revali to give some emotional support (in the battle before the last, I think); in another occasion to help him speak his true feelings (as in literally voicing them in Revali’s stead because Teba is that blunt and Revali is... you know, like he is.) As it happens between the other co-pilots, the older one often reassures the younger one (Mipha and Sidon still have an older sister/younger brother dynamic even if Sidon came from the future and is now literally older than her lol so the rule still applies! XD). So again, I feel like the age difference between Teba and Revali is noticeable, even though Teba is still a young dad himself... but I honestly feel that if someone wanted to say both Revali and Teba are like, 25, no one could tell them that the canon says otherwise XD

[shrimpmandan]

BAD SCREENSHOT IM SORRY. but I wanted to return to this post in a more serious way. I think a lot of this is due to how mainstream porn presents kink, and also generational gaps and shifts in mainstream kink acceptance.

Like. Think about it. 99% of "kinky wild insane" porn is like... stepmom catches stepson masturbating. girl takes bbc anally. daddy dom. age gaps. Mainstream studio porn has to toe a very delicate line between being kink, while still retaining mass appeal. It's still 'safe' despite being SOMEWHAT non-normative. This is what a lot of people perceive as kink.

How many times do you actually SEE proper BDSM in studio porn? Like... actual bondage, sadomasochism, impact play that isn't just spanking? Nevermind more niche fetishes like watersports or ageplay that goes beyond just saying "daddy"? Porn presents a very surface level idea of kink that's meant to make it appeal to an otherwise mostly vanilla crowd, so a lot of the deeper emotional and psychological aspects of it kinda just get lost in translation. Being too complex or rough would likely turn most people off of it.

It's good that more people are discovering and being exposed to kink of course, but the surface-level commodification leads some people to think that all kink is, is just being a little rough in bed, or liking to be called a title. They don't really see all the other stuff that goes into it, or what all else constitutes as kink. This especially shows in how a lot of these people don't understand why safewords or aftercare would be necessary in BDSM.

I'm not saying that we should gatekeep people into the more 'mild' end of kink of course, but I do think it's important to note that the core idea of something being 'kinky' at all is almost entirely socially constructed. Like... we don't consider liking tits or ass to be kinky despite the fact that they're both forms of partialism. And of course, nowadays things like spanking and hair pulling are just considered part of "rough sex", and are somewhat divorced from what most people think of as BDSM. The acceptance and normalization of kink inherently makes it so that certain things just... are no longer really kinky. Something is only a kink in relation to whether it's perceived as unusual or not.

I think a lot of these older men come from a generation where this kinda thing WAS wild and out there, but nowadays has become more normalized and accepted (such as through porn, erotica, and general online discussion). Like... you gotta remember that both oral and anal sex are considered sodomy and are outright illegal in some places. No wonder some people think that doing it up the ass or giving your girl a rough facefuck is kinky if they're in an environment that criminalizes it!

(Also for the record, I've encountered plenty of 18-25 year old girls on Fet who have a similar mindset of "hehe I'm so kinky and naughty ;) and you look and their kinks are literally just interracial sex and anal. So this definitely isn't exclusive to older men, thus why I think both generational gaps and mainstream porn are contributors to people over-hyping their relatively mild kinks.)

No word of a lie my favourite dude thing ever is when older men laugh smugly and imply that the weird kinky things they do are way beyond my understanding, cause like

I work at a sex shop. I've worked s&m clubs. I once got my thumb trapped in an animatronic gyrating asshole

You're not the wild and crazy sex freak you think you are, Gary

[biancablack2474]

BIANCAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I want Nutella.

OH OH WE HAVE GOLDEN OREOS THO YUMMY.

Also you should search up children's head x rays of their teeth. Like before their adult teeth pop out, like that is some stuff straight from a horror movie to look at.

OMFG WE ALSO HAVE WATERMELON THOOOOOOO

Wait. No. I dont want to be healthy im 25 years old if im gonna die of a sugar overdose id like it to be something extremely unhealthy but del- nope ya I still want watermelon.

BIANCA. sorry my ADD is kicking in because my adderall wore off.

DID YOU KNOW....hippos are the most dangerous animals in the wild? Like them bitches can crush your skull faster than I can spell supercalafragilisticespialidocious. Which is pretty damn fast if I do say so myself. But like I saw a video of one swimming towards a boat and like apparently they're so heavy they sink to the bottom of the lake and dat bitch was like JUMPING through the water meaning it was running so fast under water that it was able to keep up with that boat and honestly the person who recorded that is probably dead now 😐 or extremely luck, were gonna say that so I may sleep at night better.

Sincerely,

Iron Man's Punk Ass Hoe.

Anooooooonnnn (like Idk who you are),

I WANT NUTELLA TOOOO😩

Haven't had any Oreos apart from the original and chocolate. But Oreo milkshakes and Brownies are ugh so good *simping for food*

I thought of putting a screenshot of the x rays before I searched it up.......... But after I did, I—no. It was just waaaaaayy to creepy. Definitely horror movie material👌🏼

I HAVE MANGOS. Love watermelon, don't have any now😔

IT DOESN'T MATTER OF WATERMELONS ARE HEALTHY THEY JUST TASTE TOO GOOD.

But like mood. Also have I ever told you this? I wanna be stabbed to death. I think that would be so cool and either heroic it villainous, depending on the context.

NO APOLOGIZING! I LOVE THIS 😚

You just said so many things about hippos and the only thing in my head is SUPERCALAFRAGILISTICESPIALIDOCIUS

That movie was golden *sigh*

Haha just imagine, if the person recorded it and the last thing they did before dying was to post a video of a hippo running towards him on the internet before he's out like a fish out of water....... Or me in water, same thing.

Love you 👀

Sincerely,

Son just don't <3

[meltalks]

my experience with addy / hiqey

i’ve contemplated posting my history with addy/hiqey for awhile now. my friends have encouraged me to do so, but due to her stance in the rpc i was always far too scared to do so. with all that is coming to light with her recently, not only is a huge weight off my shoulders as far as comfortably roleplaying as my escape, but knowing i’m not alone. my story with addy dates back to about september 2018. i do warn you this will be long, and i’ll try to include enough details to make it make sense while not dragging things on and on. this includes both my personal relationship with addy, as well as my experience with her in groups one where she she was an admin, and groups where i was an admin. as well as i believe we coadmined one together. i’ve put screenshots where i could, but some of this dates back to 2018 and i just don’t have access to those texts/rp accounts anymore.

a huge huge shout out to @bumkeyz for starting this avalanche, and for also supporting me one on one along with all my friends to feel safe enough to come forward. i’ll put all of my story under a read more. 

i’m going to start this by saying, my name is mel/melanie. you may have heard of me because back when addy was on rpslayed she wasn’t a big fan of me for awhile. predominantly my group the cape(?) the main isn’t up anymore so i can’t remember the exact @. i’m 21 years old, i will be 22 this month. i am married & i have a 3 year old daughter. this is information i don’t normally tell people i’m married / have a child, because well, i just feel a little judged. not because anything anyone has specifically done or said, but my own anxieties worried that people will think it’s weird to be married with a child and still in twitter rp. but it is important to my story with addy, which is why i’m letting everyone know right off the bat. 

i met addy in a group called producers. this group is from september 2018, so i’m not able to access anything right now, but am digging. i played (feel free to clown me) a g-eazy character named pierce. addy played a carlson young who’s name i can’t quite recall, and a gracie abrams named lolly. lolly & pierce became friends first & at some point we exchanged phone numbers. lolly & pierce flirted a lot, pierce was a player yada yada. eventually she ended up getting a different ship on lolly & pushed her carlson young onto pierce. pierce had a different love interest & didn’t end up going for her. this should’ve been the first negative sign/red flag. when pierce didn’t get with her character, she got very short & snarky ic and ooc. i believe both of her characters blocked me ic. even though pierce had made no ic promises to either to not be with someone else. we still maintained some level of friendship, but she was extremely weird about when i mentioned my ship. our friendship ended for a few months because of an incident that started ic between me and another character. the mun who played this character and i had bonded ooc over having been pregnant, we talked somewhat often about her dealings with her pregnancy. so i felt close enough/friendly enough with this mun that when something happened with her character & another character ic i dm’ed her to see if she was ok .long story short it went bad. i texted addy and told her that. i explained that i felt as if this mun & i were close and it was like dm’ing a friend. she held onto the fact that i shouldn’t have messaged her. when i didn’t immediately conform to her thought she kicked me out of the group. i was literally devastated. i loved that group, that character, my ship; all of it. she blocked me. though this story is 2 paragraphs long, it’s minor in the grand scheme of things. after this she smeared me on rpslayed for months until our paths crossed again in a group called glitches/glitch? we decided to squash our beef. this was december 2019.

in december 2019 we became friends again. honestly, i wish we never crossed paths. we got very close right away. she started telling me about a bad friendship she had, with someone we mutually knew from producers who i will not name since it’s not my place to put their name in this, and gained my sympathy. so much so that i ended a friendship with that person based solely on accusations that addy had told me. this is something that i can now realize i did wrong. i literally cussed this person out on the phone, solely based off things addy told me. i didn’t listen to someone who had been my friend for months, who defended me and picked me up when addy was tearing me down on rpslayed. i turned my back because addy convinced me to. she made this person seem awful. and again, i’m not naming them, but they know exactly who they are. and when thy do read this, i’m sorry.

now this is where things get out of hand. addy & i begun an intimate relationship. this is very personal, and i know some may pass judgment. but my husband was cool with it. addy also began talking to my husband, they texted. we had a groupchat. not to get into details about the relationship, but it was romantic. i am going to try and organize my thoughts. into themes.

money

this relationship lasted from about january ish to april romantically. i became addy’s crutch. she began going through personal issues with her family. and i started sending her money. to be frank i don’t remember how it started. i helped her with a job search, supporting her through these tough things that were going on. the money started casually i suppose. it was $10 for lunch. $25 for nails. but then it got worse. i bought her a phone. and slowly she grew more entitled to my money. asking for it. demanding it. guilting me when i didn’t give it. i lied to her and told her i lost my credit card and turned it off, but the guilt i had i told her that i could turn it on when she needed it. in screenshots i will post below she guilted me because i was sick and fell asleep before turning my card on. whether what she’s saying occured is true or not, it was just one example of how she made me feel. at one point she had my credit card on her uber, and charged nearly $400 of ubers on my credit card that i didn’t know about. she claimed it was an accident, because i let her put my card on her account under the agreement that she would turn it off. we had an agreement of what she would pay me back, some things that i got her were gifts and i didn’t want/need back. other things it was always an agreement she would pay me back. however whenever i would mention sending me a payment she had an excuse. one time even guilting me by reminding me how much better i have it than she does. all in all i spent / sent upwards of $2500/$3000 on her. only about $1500/$1800 i wanted back. i never saw a dime back, she never made good on her promises. at some point i gave up on asking.

ETA: as far as the uber situation goes, she did apologize and state that it was never on purpose when i found out that there was nearly $500 in charges. she said she thought she was charging her moms card. this shows a photo of 1 page of a 5 page statement of all the transactions put on my card by her in one month. there are only 6 of these transactions that were me. all of the ubers and venmo were her. i didn’t make her take off my card, which in hindsight was obviously a very bad decision. i just didn’t want to leave her stranded without ways to get home/where she needed to be. 

this is her demanding money. this was in the summer. at this point i was so manipulated by her/scared of her/scared of losing her that i didn’t know how to say no. in this instance i deflected with a picture of my child. screen shot.

in the screenshots here, this is where i fell asleep. i was on vacation and got extremely dehydrated in the sun. i literally felt so sick and she made me feel guilty for falling asleep. X X X 

this screenshot shows one of the times i actually asked her when she would repay me. at this point my credit card was nearly maxed out from ubers and sending her money. i was anxious about it and she made me feel bad for asking because her situation was worse than mine. this was the same day she asked me for $250 for a down payment on her car. X asking for money. X making me feel bad for asking when she’s gonna pay.

literally to this day im still in credit card debt because of this. yes i make good money, yes my husband does too. but credit card debt is hard and everyone knows it. i do fine for myself, but i don’t have hundreds extra to pay this down. 

also, i cannot locate the bank screenshot. but as recent as this february, six months since she spoke to me, she still had my card on her uber and usted it again. i can’t find the screenshot of the actual of the bank transaction because i’ve completely had to close that account for fraud and transfer my balance to a new card. but here is a screenshot from february 12 where i tell my friends i caught her doing it. X .

manipulation in groups/related to groups

orbis. i ran a group called orbis, it was a reality show group. addy was one of my friends who really wanted me to open it. all of my groups i’ve adminned i’m the lead. i just always take on that roll so i do get very busy with them on top of my real life. i work full time and i’m a mom so i spread myself thin.she made me feel really guilty for this, saying i wasn’t giving her enough time, she wasn’t anyones dog. so i posted my unfollow. then she told me i was stupid for doing that. so i deleted my unfollow. then she said that me deleting my unfollow showed that i didn’t really care how she felt. screens. X X

lumeer. very similar situation to above. only this time i left the group completely for about 3 weeks. i called my coadmin crying about what she was doing to me, sent her the psds and templates for grpahics and left fully, though i helped them out if issues arose/they needed anything. 

impulse. this was recently and this got brought to the tags. im going to copy & paste what i sent to bumkeyz as far as the story goes for what happened.

“ what happened in impulse is only one of several examples of addy being awful in groups i've adminned. this goes back to our friendship but specifically here's what happened in impulse. addy played a character named briar, the other characters involved were as mentioned in other posts loki & khalil (fai fc). one of he first days of the group khalil hooked up with both loki & briar. when the "updates" account posted about loki & khalil's hook up (we posted any and all plot drops that were sent in, it was a reality show so we consistently updated what the cameras caught), briar got upset on main. addy then messaged khalil's mun ooc and asked for the plot to be erased. essentially because she didn't like that khalil had hooked up with both her and another girl in the same day/same manor. as odd of a request as i was the khalil mun agreed to wipe it & asked that if there was anything that ever came up again that made addy uncomfortable to please not hesitate to dm. addy then softblocked khalil. which is strange. why soft block with briar's reason to dislike khalil has been wiped? that night addy posted on her personal tumblr hiqey "i forgot all fai khadra fcs are weirdos" or soemthing along that line. the khalil mun reasonably got uncomfortable with that, but was softblocked & didn't tell the main. they just ignored it since their characters weren't interacting now. for the next few days addy continued to shade khalil and loki on main, despite any ic reason for disliking them being wiped. loki then approached briar IN CHARACTER asking what was wrong/why she was shading/why they didn't like her. i don't know all the details of that conversation, but i know it ended with loki saying she was going to block briar & briar saying that was fine. bear in mind the admins had no idea any of this was happening at this point. addy then dmed the main, playing victim. after more shading of khalil, khalil's mun decided to block briar as well. addy despite wiping this plot and having 0 ic communication with khalil continued to shade the characters ic. so addy dmed the main playing innocent. asking for us to have them unblock, saying she had no idea why they blocked or what she did. as admins we had no idea why either, figured it was something ic so we dmed both muns. khalil's mun agreed after some hestiation, and asked if they had to follow her and i said no. they didn't elaborate. loki's mun however refused, & i'm glad she did because she told us what was going on. of course once we were told everyting we didn't make her unblock. up until we told addy that we were not going to make those muns unblock her, she was extremely sweet to us. she praised us on her rpt. said she loved the group. fed the main compliments. but when she didn't get her way out of us, and was essentially told on, she started causing issues on the timeline with different characters. she sent us a dm on the main telling us to "learn how to handle your group melanie" and deactivated before i could get a chance to reply. “

what i didn’t tell bumkeyz is that deejay/rpslayed played khalil. another example of addy’s manipulation is that when she saw deejay getting anons she followed deejay and texted her after several months of no communication, starting to tell her side of the story and play innocent -- not knowing that deejay was the person who was behind khalil the entire time. she made khalil out to be the bad guy, not knowing that it was deejay. after finding out deejay and i were friends, when deejay posted on rpslayed for people to follow me shortly after trying to get deejay on her side, addy blocked us both (again). 

manipulation between friends (?)

i don’t really know a great way to title this, but this is similar to the situation i mentioned with the unnamed person above -- how addy made me think that person was the worst so i would stop being friends with them. this is a few more examples of that.

the entire time i was friends with addy, she told me that deejay hated me. she told me that deejay was convinced that i was this person who tried to get her kicked out of a group. she told me that she did her very best to convince deejay that it wasn’t true, but no matter what she did deejay just hated me. nearly a year later deejay and i cross paths in a group. we started talking ooc and i mentioned this. i asked her why she thought that was me. we found out that basically, while addy was telling me she was trying to convince deejay it wasn’t me, she was telling deejay that it was me. she would also tell me personal information about deejay that i had no business knowing, whether it be real life information or just telling me the groups deejay adminned when she knew deejay didn’t want anyone knowing. 

i have found out recently that addy has recently been telling people a lie about when she came to visit me. on one evening when she visited me in june of 2019, we went to my friend’s house. we both drank, and smoked. i am someone who neither drinks nor smokes, and i got a very bad mix from it. my anxiety sky rocketed. i was crying on my friends couch practically paralyzed. i didn’t want to move. i felt sick. i felt scared. my friends were going to drive us back to my house and shortly before we were about to walk out addy said she needed to go to the hospital. my friend’s boyfriend drove her there, and when he came back they took me home. this night is very blurry for me. i remember barely being able to see straight, my friend helped me walk to and from the car. addy has told her friends that i refused to pick her up from the hospital that night, and i’ve now heard this from two of her close friends. when in reality, i was so far gone that not only was i sick and scared, but i couldn’t see straight. i had absolutely no ability to be behind a wheel. i’m not surprised she twisted this against me.

i provided a few people screenshots where addy was telling me to block them/trying to convince me that they were awful and hurting me. at the same time that addy was telling me this, she was doing the opposite to them -- to keep us apart. i believe this is some sort of power. always wanting to be everyones number one.

i don’t have a lot of screenshots for this, so i won’t go into much detail, but i can say on more than one occasion, or more than five or ten she told me who to and not to be friends with. told me to block people who had been our friends who were no longer friends with her. 

flat out manipulation.

i don’t want to go back through my texts too much honestly. it’s still a sore spot. it still sucks and it still hurts. but i think anyone and everyone involved with addy at some point or another has similar stories about the way she treats her friends. there were points where i begged. begged and begged her not to leave me. i can’t even count how many times she blocked and unblocked me. how many times she made me feel the worst and then came back. she came back because she knw i was there. and that my generosity was practically endless. i couldn’t say no to her, frankly i can’t say no to anyone. if anyone dmed me today and said hey i need $15 for a ride home. i’d probably send it. that’s just how i am. addy completely had me wrapped around her finger. to the point that i left friends who were good to me. i left my own groups i worked hard on. i nearly ended my engagement (which cannot be entirely blamed on her, but the relationship she and i had was built off lots of manipulation). i know that i could go find 100 screenshots and texts of her manipulating me but honest i just don’t want to do that to myself again. she has made me out to be the villain to anyone she can. i have had 2 different people tell me that she told them i say the n word, which is the furthest thing from the truth. i fear the things she’s said about me to people. if she can 100% make something up, what can she twist from actual arguments or issues we had? 

i know this sounds like a lot of rambling for nothing. but for nearly two years i’ve lived in fear in the rpc of addy. less so when we were friends. i’ve feared telling my side because i felt invalid. frankly even as i type this im scared. scared she’s already convinced everyone i’m awful and no one will read this or care. i just am thankful that this finally came to light. i am glad that i won’t feel scared anymore. roleplay is my one place to be free. as a mother, a full time worker, i don’t have a lot of time for hobby’s and frankly i don’t have a lot of them. i don’t draw, or read. i like to write. and i’m just thankful this can finally be lifted off me.

[pumpkinpaix]

老师好！Thank you for writing! i found you through your MDZS story and i really adore your insightful writings about the show. In my opinion, i even think the show is better than the novel in their presentation of WX relationship ~ ! it feels more natural and less pandering. Another essay suggestion for you if you want to write --- In the show, who do you think fell in love first in WX? When were the "turning points" when they realized?

sldjfslikl first of all anon, it’s WILD that anyone would address me as 老师 and i’m simultaneously flattered and gobsmacked. (i’m really really really not qualified to be called 老师 friend—thank you, like, a lot?? but yeah, i gotta say i’m not that cool) thank you for reading my fic and liking it and apparently my one meta enough to come talk to me!! also, SORRY this took approximately a million years i’ve been working on it on/off for like. two weeks. (@the other anon who also requested meta—pls forgive me im really doing my best apparently these take a lot out of me)

confession: I wrote a WHOLE ADDITIONAL essay in response to your opinion about show vs. novel that i ultimately decided to cut because it flies a little too close to the discourse sun and you didn’t ask for that hahaha. if it turns out you are interested in it, feel free to hmu and i can post it (though i’ll probably try to keep it out of the tags for my own mental health’s sake im not cut out for this lmao)

that all being said, who do I think fell in love first? it was definitely lan wangji, and it was right here:

[id: screenshot of lan wangji watching wei wuxian making a wish to “protect the weak and curb the strong, with a clear conscience for all my life” from episode 7 of the untamed drama. wei wuxian’s eyes are closed, his hands clasped. lan wangji looks on with a surprised tenderness. /end id]

I think it’s safe to say that he already finds wei wuxian attractive/intriguing (see: his reaction to wei wuxian drawing his portrait, tying the lan ribbon around their wrists, the PEAK gay panic in his voice when wei wuxian trips and falls on top of him), but this is the first moment he’s really moved by him. up until this point, wei wuxian has been teasing, immature, A Nuisance™, too clever for his own good, troublemaker energy personified etc but he hasn’t ever revealed his deeper moral values in front of lan wangji—and he does it like this, without pretension, without irony. He doesn’t spend his wish on something frivolous or material: he wishes to be able to do good for all his life, to be righteous, to be kind. it’s the wish he makes for both of them. “the promise we made together all those years ago,” as he says, half a lifetime later.

like just. imagine, for a moment, being lan wangji, whose whole world is being constantly challenged and needled by this unfairly attractive, chaotic bastard and then he just comes out of left field with this. I think this is where lan wangji first recognizes himself in wei wuxian—that at their core, they share their most important values.

look what i’m saying is this is where I fell in love with wei wuxian.

(sidenote: I really think a lot of the tragedy of mdzs/the untamed is stems from this moment. wei wuxian fails, over and over and over, even when his wish never changes, even when all he ever wanted was to do good without fear.)

i had to think for a really long time to try and decide which moments i wanted to talk about on wei wuxian’s part, because i don’t think he’s nearly as easy to pinpoint. lan wangji falls in love like a lightning strike, but wei wuxian’s love is something that grows so slowly, i don’t think he realizes what it is until pretty late in the game.

so let’s begin with this moment on phoenix mountain:

[id: screenshot of lan wangji and wei wuxian facing each other on phoenix mountain from episode 25 of the untamed drama. lan wangji is waiting expectantly for an answer, having just asked, “what am i to you?”, hand behind his back. wei wuxian is holding his flute, expression complicated and uncertain. /end id]

this is the first time i think wei wuxian is asked directly to label his feelings about lan wangji, and he says, “i once thought of you as a lifelong, intimate friend.” and when lan wangji presses, “and now?”, he doesn’t respond.

two episodes later, when wei wuxian is taking the wen refugees out of their prison camp and lan wangji appears before him, I think he has some kind of answer to lan wangji’s question:

[id: screenshot from episode 27 of the untamed drama. wei wuxian holds out chenqing before him in challenge to lan wangji, who is offscreen. he is smiling, just slightly, resigned and fond and terribly sad. /end id]

“if there really must be a battle between me and them, then I would rather fight to the death with you. if i must die, then at least i would like to die by hanguang-jun’s hand. it wouldn’t be an injustice.”

if that isn’t some kind of confession, I don’t really know what is.

but it’s too late—he’s now a defector in the eyes of the four sects. lan wangji lets him go and wei wuxian rides away. the remainder of his first life, that’s how things stand. even through everything with a’yuan, the final massacre at the nightless city—even though there’s something really meaningful there between them, it’s all tinged with a sense of impossibility, you know? there’s no outcome where they can resolve it happily. wei wuxian has gone too far down that single-plank bridge.

the first moment i think wei wuxian has to confront the unresolved and unsaid things between him and lan wangji comes when lan wangji gets drunk that one night and tells him, “i have regret.”

“what regret?”

“that at the nightless city, I did not stand beside you.”

[id: screenshot of wei wuxian looking at lan wangji (offscreen) with tears in his eyes as the full realization of what lan wangji just drunkenly confessed hits him from episode 36 of the untamed drama. /end id]

“so all this time, you’ve been searching for me?”

earlier i said can you imagine being lan wangji for a sec, and i’m gonna say it again except god. can you. IMAGINE being wei wuxian in this moment. finding out that this person that you maybe suspected you had deeper feelings for but never acted on has spent the entire sixteen years of your death searching for you, regretting that he didn’t stand with you before you died? a regret that he’s been carrying in secret, alone, for sixteen years?? that’s A Lot to unpack.

however, I don’t think wei wuxian really, fully understands and accepts how he feels and how lan wangji feels in return, how far they’re both willing to go until episode 42, at the confrontation at jinlingtai.

[id: two screenshots from episode 42 of the untamed drama, right after lan wangji takes a stand beside wei wuxian against the four sects. image 1 is lan wangji smiling at wei wuxian: he is gentle and sure. image 2 is wei wuxian smiling back at him, eyes red-rimmed and wet. /end id]

even though lan wangji has been walking with him since dafan shan, he’s been doing it with a plausible deniability. and here, when wei wuxian is trying to give him an out, lan wangji puts everything he has on the line so that he can clearly stand with wei wuxian, without dissembling, without hesitation. “the feeling of of walking on a single-plank bridge into the dark truly is no worse.”

lan wangji is finished with regrets.

“it’s just funny, that’s all,” wei wuxian says, “back when the whole world flattered me with praise, you were the only one who would scold me. but now that everyone is calling for my death, all hating and condemning me, you’re nevertheless the only one standing by my side.”

i think after that, for all the remaining episodes, there’s an unspoken commitment between the two of them that underpins the rest of their interactions, which I think I can say without reservation that I like more than how it played out in the novel. EDIT 16 APR 2020: I changed my mind a while ago, ahaha. Turns out, I don’t prefer CQL over MDZS. I love them both so much. ;A; there’s something really profound about it, the trust in their unlabelled relationship. it really feels like the inexorable culmination of two adults in their mid-thirties coming together after falling in love for almost twenty years. there’s a maturity to it that isn’t present in the way the novel does the confession (which does have its own disaster energy™ charm) that I think highlights the fact that they love each other, not just because they admire each other, not just because they’re attracted to one another, but because they understand each other—because when they look at each other, they also see themselves.

[hufflautia]

hI this is a tOTALLY ANONYMOUS PERSON ASKING. and i am asking u to answer everything on here😌

lmajfniasnf yall i forced menna to send me this ask and i was kinda kidding but also a bit serious but also kinda kidding- ok anwyas here we go 

(1) Do You Sleep With Your Closet Doors Open Or Closed? closed 

(2) Do You Have Freckles? no 

(3) Can You Whistle? yes

(4) Last Song You Listened To. “Needed Me” by Rihanna

(5) What Is Your Favourite Colour? grayish green

(6) Relationship Status. in love with loki<3! 

(7) What Is The Temperature Right Now? cold, my fingers are cold and menna knows this 

(8) Did You Wake Up Cranky? no i did not, quite the opposite actually! 

(9) How Many Followers? around 650 

(10) Zodiac Sign. taurus

(11) What Is Your Eye Colour? brown

(12) Take A Vitamin Daily? yea

(13) Do You Sing In The Shower? usually 

(14) What Books Are You Reading? no book bc i have no brain cells 

(15) Grab The Book Nearest To You, Turn To Page 64, Give Me Line 14. 

“i cannot imagine,” replied the scarecrow; “but we can go and see.” -the wonderful wizard of oz! i forgot i had that book, i got it from library for school last year but then quarantine hit and i couldn't return it bc the library closed 

(16) Favourite Anime? i barely watch anime, so i guess “Attack on Titans”, being that its one of the few animes I've watched

(17) Last Person You Cried In Front Of? my math teacher 

(18) Do You Collect Anything? only the souls of the innocent. also chapstick. 

(19) What Did You Have For Lunch? wontons that fucked my stomach up bc the meat was not cooked properly :D don't we love that?????????????!!!!!!

(20) Do You Dance In The Car? not rlly 

(21) Favourite Animal? dog 

(22) Do You Watch The Olympics? no 

(23) What Time Do You Usually Go To Bed? usually 11 or 12- depends on day

(24) Are You Wearing Makeup Right Now? no 

(25) Do You Prefer To Swim In A Pool Or The Ocean? pool 

(26) Favourite Tumblr Blog? clandestineloki

(27) Bottled Water Or Tap Water? i don't care as long as its safe

(28) What Makes You Happy? my siblings, my best friends, loki, tom hiddleston

(29) Post A Gif Of What You’re Currently Feeling Right Now.

i saw this and thought it was a good fit but then i realized it was too calm so

(30) Do You Study Better With Or Without Music? without

(31) Dogs Or Cats? DOGSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

(32) If You Were A Crayon What Colour Would You Be? yellow 

(33) PlayStation Or Xbox. i don't care

(34) Would You Swim In The Lake Or Ocean? I've never swam in a lake before, so lake

(35) Do You Believe In Magic? yea

(36) What Colour Shirt Are You Wearing? gray

(37) Can You Curl Your Tongue? no 

(38) Do You Save Money Or Spend It? depends

(39) Is There Anything Pink Within 10 Feet Of You? yes 

(40) Do You Have Any Obsessions Right Now? of course, loki will always be an obsession of mine bruh 

(41) Have You Ever Caught A Butterfly? nO BC IM SCARED OF BUTTERFLIES 

(42) Are You Easily Influenced By Other People? yes:’( 

(43) Do You Have Strange Dreams? of course

(44) Do You Like Going On Airplanes? yes 

(45) Name One Movie That Made You Cry. ParaNorman

(46) Peanuts Or Sunflower Seeds? sunflower seeds

(47) If I Handed You A Concert Ticket Right Now, Who Would You Want The Performer To Be? the neighbourhood

(48) Are You A Picky Eater? kinda 

(49) Are You A Heavy Sleeper? eh 

(50) Do You Fear Thunder / Lightning? kinda 

(51) Do You Like To Read / Write? yes 

(52) Do You Like Your Music Loud? depends on mood

(53) Would You Rather Carve Pumpkins Or Wrap Presents? wrap 

(54) Put Your Music On Shuffle, What Is The First Song That Came Up? sleepy hallow ft foushee- deep end freestyle 

(55) What Season Are You In Right Now? (Weather) winter?? 

(56) What Are You Craving Right Now? l o k i (my original answer was warmth but its basically the same thing) 

(57) Post A Screenshot Of Your Tumblr Feed. 

(58) What Is Your Gender? female

(59) Coffee Or Tea? tea

(60) Do You Have Any Homework Right Now? If So, What Is It About? nope, i finished it on Friday and Saturday like a bad bitchhhhhhhhh

(61) What Is Your Sexuality? bisexual

(62) Do You Make Your Bed In The Morning? depends on day 

(63) Favourite Pokemon? squirtle i guess

(64) Favourite Social Media? insta 

(65) What’s Your Opinion On Instagram Stories? they're fine 

(66) Do You Get Homesick? kinda 

(67) Are You A Virgin? ill leave it up to ur imagination bitch (MENNA IM SO SORRY IM NOT CALLING U A BTICH IM JUST SAYING THAT IN GENERAL) 

(68) What Shampoo And Conditioner Are You Using Right Now? i forgot the name, but its white and fancy and from the same brand 

(69) If You Were Far From Home And Needed To Sleep For The Night, Would You Choose To Rent A Crappy Motel Room For $60 Or Sleep In Your Car For Free? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm that is a very good question, probably the motel 

(70) Are Both Of Your Blood Parents Still In Your Life? AHAH depends on what u mean by “still in my life”!!!!!!! i guess technically yes, but I've already cut off those bitches in my head 😌 manifesting it into existence <3 

(71)  Whats The Next Movie You Want To See In Theaters? avatar 2 

(72) Do You Miss Your Ex? i don't have one 

(73) What Is Your Favourite Quote Right Now? “not you, i didn't wanna hurt you”

(74)  What Eye Colour Do You Find Sexiest? brown bc if i say any other color, its probably a yt person and also brown be smexy

(75) Did You Like Swinging As A Child? Do You Still Get Excited When You See A Swing Set? yes, yes 

(76) What Was The Last Thing You Ate? honey buttered biscuits 

(77) What Games Do You Have On Your Phone? among us, maybe Minecraft 

(78) Would You Give A Homeless Person CPR If They Were Dying? Why Or Why Not? no bc i don't know how and i would call for someone else to help 

(79) Been On The Computer For 5 Hours Straight?probably bc I'm a hermit

(80) Stalked Someone On A Social Network? amsifnda this is ME ur talking to 

(81) Do You Like Meeting New People? yes kinda, unless they're awkward (aHEM BREAKOUT ROOMS WITH NEW BUT AWKWARD PEOPLE-) 

(82) Do You Wear Rings? If You Do, Take A Picture Of Them. i used to but not anymore 

(83) Do You Sleep With Your Bedroom Door Open Or Closed?  i want it closed but the person i share the room with leaves it open bc they say we’re gonna fuckin suffocate if we leave it closed and i hate it bc ✨trauma✨! DONT WE LOVE TRAUMA??!?!?!?!??!?!?!? :D............

(84) What Are Three Things You Did Today? i baked biscuits, i did college stuff, i showered

(85) What Do You Wear To Bed? usually mismatched pjs 

(86) List All Of Your Different Beauty Products You Have Right Now. chapstick, natural skincare serum, lotion, face masks

(87) Are You A Day Or Night Person? day 

(88) List All Of Your Video Games On Your Phone, Console Etc. don't have any

(89) Tell Me About A Dream That You Had And When It Happened.

a snake chased me and it was weird as fuck

(90) Favourite Soda Drink? don't have one 

(91) What Sounds Are Your Favourite? people laughing, violin and piano, my friends voices, my siblings voices

(92) Do You Wear Jeans Or Sweats More? SWEATS

(93) How Do You Look Right Now? comfy 

(94) Name Something That Relaxes You. showering

(95) What Tattoo Do You Want? maybe an important quote? “dont trust owls” imprinted on my face

(96) Favourite YouTuber? stephanie soooooooooooooooooooooo 

[dmnsqrl]

Posted @withregram • @funds4caregivers YOUR ATTENTION IS REQUIRED! This Black caregiver has only received $25 towards this goal and requires $700 total in order to retrieve his children! Supported is required NOW!!!! Send funds of minimums of $20+ to ensure that he reaches this goal as quickly and sustainably as possible!!!! Share to your story, save to bookmarks, like and comment five words or more below about what colour combinations represent your mood at the moment! ID: yellow background. With a Red banner at the top with white text which reads, "Please read this carefully" Below that contains a red text box with a screenshot of an Instagram message which reads, "They took my kids I just left the police station they won't give them back until I have residency im 700 short please help me I can't sleep or eat until I get this apartment and get them back some ass hole called because we were sleeping in the car and the cops came but group home are no place for kids its like kid jail omg im loosing my mind im saving every cent I get which isn't much it seems like no one wants to help me I know there not obligated every donation is a blessing but with 5 dollar donations they'll b changed by time I get them back im sorry to" . On the right contains more text which reads, "Black caregiver can't get his kids back unless he finds a place. He is $700 short! WE HAVE LET THIS CAREGIVER DOWN! LET'S ADDRESS THIS NOW!" Below that payment information on a yellow box which is: CASHAPP:$Marly102585 VENMO: Braxton-watkins-2 PAYPAL: marlynino102585@gmail.com https://www.instagram.com/p/CM4pduojAYDLvuFKWuOto5HKL_eeIBpPIZa13w0/?igshid=1ryw8tbrhc4fd

[moviestorian]

Im glad the asks helped! I have anxiety and depression and can understand what youre going through. My ask today is what are your thoughts on Bo Rhap as a movie?

Thanks! :) I’m above all extremely happy to see people on this site being so kind and supportive in time of need, it’s a human quality that will never get enough praise! I’m also really sorry to hear about your problems. :( I send you lots of love, I can imagine how difficult it must be for you, but I’m sure you're strong and coping❤️

As for your actual question - that’s some truly excellent and interesting timing, considering that I rewatched BoRhap (with @incblackbird) literally three days ago. :P It was already my third rewatch, and while I enjoyed the movie overall, I liked it quite significantly less than upon the last time I saw it. Of course, there’s been gazillion discourses about BoRhap, whether it’s genius, extremely evil, etc., but since it’s such a broad topic (and I think some of my opinions could potentially outrage certain parts of the fandom), this time I’m going to stick to purely cinematic terms.

Needless to say, the soundtrack is excellent - with music such as Queen’s you don’t really have to do much, but they made a good choice of songs, alternating between their best known hits (We Will Rock You, Somebody to Love, Bohemian Rhapsody) and songs to fit the narrative (Doing All Right, Now I’m Here, Who Wants to Live Forever, Love of my Life). It’s practically impossible to leave the screening of BoRhap without at least one Queen song stuck in your head.

The cast was overall very good, too. My personal favourites in terms of acting were Gwilym Lee (who I liked even more than Rami), Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton and Allen Leech - I think they did a great job with their roles as they were written (whether their characters were well written or not is a subject for a whole another discussion). All the side characters were well acted, too (Mike Myers, Meneka Das and Aaron McCusker, for instance, I found particularly memorable), but I must admit I wasn’t a big fan of Joe Mazzello and Ben Hardy, but even they weren’t bad. So, acting is definitely one of the strongest points of the film.

Moving on, I also think they did a great job when it comes to costumes (Brian lending some of his old clothing definitely helped) and make-up (except for Roger’s wigs, perhaps); the choreography and stage movement for the characters were super well done, too - and it definitely wasn’t an easy task!

Now, let’s discuss cinematography. I will talk about editing in a separate paragraph, so for now I’m gonna stick to other aspects. The composition of shots struck me as rather mediocre, nothing particularly exceptional in either good or bad way, it was pretty basic but rather correct. Of course, there were some shots I really liked, but if I were to start adding screenshots the post would become way too long. XD The colours I really liked, especially in the musical scenes - they were vivid and lovely, and they used a combination of colours that I tend to appreciate in cinema, like various shades of blue and red. Finally, the camerawork - for dialogue scenes it was correct; again, rather average with some use of handheld camera which served no particular dramatic purpose, but it wasn’t nowhere near very bad, also it’s quite a common thing in modern biopics I would say. Handheld camerawork isn’t bad in default, but my comment largely comes from my personal preferences: in most cases I don’t really like it, especially when it’s particularly shaky. Then, there are scenes in BoRhap which display excellent camerawork, namely Live Aid and We Will Rock You scenes. If most scenes were filmed like that, I would give the movie a higher rating.

Before I move to the worst (imo) cinematic aspects of the movie, let’s have a look at writing. It is probably the most divisive thing in the fandom - people seem to either adore or absolutely loathe it; my stance lies somewhere inbetween. The first time I saw the film (I’m gonna remind you that I’ve seen it four times), I had certain objections, but the script didn’t bother me all that much; I was mostly simply having fun in the cinema. With every next watching, the experience was getting gradually worse, but even now I don’t hate the movie. Yes, some of the dialogue is cheesy, trite and makes me cringe a bit - certain parts of the script definitely end on an “overly sentimental” territory, I can’t deny that. Knowing quite a lot about Freddie, Queen and their stories, I generally think they deserve a better script; some characterisation was a bit offputting and chronology was all over the place. Having said that, I understand where some of those narrative choices come from, as scripts for mainstream movies require oversimplification of events, archetypes, and patterns. And quite frankly, I don’t think BoRhap differs any drastically from most modern biopics; it’s not a masterpiece, but - in my opinion - it’s also not bad overall. Regardless the flaws of the script, the movie still managed to emotionally affect a huge, if not major, portion of viewers, entertain and move them, and honestly? I think that was pretty much the point. Btw, there were some lines that I really loved, like “Puritans in public, perverts in private”, and I still think that their decision to cut from Live Aid performance to Ray Foster’s grim face during We Are the Champions was the funniest shit ever. XD Would BoRhap’s script benefit from sticking to historical accuracy? I’m gonna say yes, I think so - the scenes that were the closest to actual events are definitely the strongest - but this approach would require tons of changes, including narrowing down the narrative scope and probably the characters, too. Also, a lot of people keep forgetting that this is not an arthouse, niche film and therefore resorts to narrative and cinematic choice that compromise between satisfying the fans and the newbies; it’s meant to tell a (simple) story and entertain, not educate and provoke existential and philosophical debates. Still, I think the script could have been done a bit better, because some scenes  (the tour “Now I’m Here” montage) feel a bit...random?

Finally, the infamous editing. I totally agree that it was one of the most undeserving Academy Awards that year, because some scenes were simply atrocious, with their unmotivated and overly fast cuts and unreasonably ridiculous face that doesn’t fit the dialogue scenes, and those are honestly the worst when it comes to pacing and editing. I think the editing is the worst aspect of BoRhap; but even here, I could point at some examples of pretty amazing editing (Oscar-worthy? Not necessarily, but definitely very good); again, I’m gonna bring up Live Aid and “We Will Rock You” scenes, especially the latter, because less people talk about it. I already mentioned that it has some really nice camerawork AND colours, but also the editing is actually really cool, because it’s cut to the music! Which makes me think: “what a shame!”, because if they went with different editing choices, the movie would be affected in a positive way. The way we have it, it’s either a hit or miss (sadly, mostly miss), and the badly edited scenes are pretty striking, so the ones that are done nicely are unfortunately a wasted potential.

Okay, this is already waaay too long, so I’m just gonna finish with a few general remarks. Well, despite BoRhap’s flaws, I still like and enjoy it. With every screening slightly less, but enjoy it anyway. I don’t think any amount of discourse will ever take away my positive experiences and memories from seeing it twice in cinema. It sparked my previously dormant love for Queen and united me with some people in the fandom and in real life; making this movie made Brian and Roger happy; as a result, I like this movie. It brings back a lot of positive recollections, which sometimes is more important than critical discussions. And boy, do I adore those - I’m often critical and I adore analysing stuff academically; but I think that not all daily interactions require those and depending on who’s asking and what about, I’m capable of switching between the two options. If somebody asks me in 25 years whether I remember the times of BoRhap’s release, I’ll be far less likely to say “yeah, the editing sucked and writing was cringy, I remember the discourse on tumblr and instagram” than “Yes, I remember that chilly evening in December when I had a really fun time and ended up with 10 Queen songs stuck in my head”, because the latter is the experience I want to remember.

Thank you for this ask! Hope it wasn’t overly exhausting to read, I didn’t proofread this, sorry! xx

[mytearsrricochet]

color icon tutorial

ok i’m not super great at making icons but an anon requested a tutorial for my icons so i will post my process! it’s good for beginners i think (even tho i have been making these icons this way since 2016 lol) 

you’ll need:

Photoshop CS5 or higher (I have CS5 which is quite old, I know, but I pirated it many years ago oops)

relatively hq pics to make icons out of

a psd (if you need some, tumblr.com/tagged/psd is what i periodically check for some). 

an action (preferably sharpening action, since that is what i use)

a texture if you want

you, yourself, and you, and i guess this tutorial

i’m going to be making this as a beginner’s tutorial so it’s gonna go about as in-depth as  one can be! it’s gonna include a lot so feel free to skip a lot of it if you are already pretty well-versed in photoshop or icon-making.

ITS SO LONG IM SO SORRY IT IS SO VERY IN-DEPTH I’VE EXPLAINED EVERY POSSIBLE THING I COULD’VE

but also if you have any questions at all, please let me know. i love teaching people stuff.

example of the icons that i make:

Hi hello welcome

Ok, so first open up Photoshop. I am using CS5.

You will need hq pics of whatever you plan to icon. I do 99% Taylor Swift, so I use taylorpictures.net for all my icon needs. Make sure they are of semi-decent quality, they don’t have to be amazing since we will be shrinking them down to a very small size so much of the quality is gonna disappear anyway but like, make sure you can at least tell the subject from the background distinctly (you’ll see why later).

This is the picture I am using for this tutorial (and will post icons separately):

Open this in ps (File > Open > the picture)

Ok so now it’s the actual tutorial lol

1. Crop the image 

We are not going to crop it to 100x100! Select the Crop tool and set the dimensions to 300 px x 300 px--MAKE SURE THAT YOU TYPE IN PX AFTER YOU TYPE IN 300, OR ELSE IT WILL CONVERT TO CM AND THAT WILL NOT WORK FOR THIS!

Next, crop the picture you want as much as you want--as long as you get what you want in the icon. For these kinds of icons, you just want to focus on one item--like Taylor, for example--instead of multiple (not Taylor and her backup dancers since this isn’t what my icons look like and you won’t be able to do that very well on a beginner level). Crop that to a 300x300 px size and click the check mark on the top bar to finalize it. 

If your pic is hq enough--meaning a larger picture--it will probably look super small. That’s ok, it’s just proportional to the old picture. Go to the right side bar and select the Navigation tool. 

If that tool isn’t there, you will just have to go to Window and select Navigator, and it will bring that up for you. 

See where it says 100% in the picture right there? It will likely say something like 25% or whatever if you just cropped it, so change it to 100% which will bring it to full size.

Cool! now it should look like this:

2. Use the Quick Selection Tool 

Go to the left sidebar on Photoshop. Depending on which PS you have, it might look different. This is what mine looks like. Regardless, the icon should look relatively the same I believe across all Photoshop versions. If it’s not there, you might want to left click and hold down on some of the icons and see if it is an alternative option (it should be there already--but it is grouped with the Magic Wand Tool just in case).

This tool has three options in the top bar: free select, add, and subtract. Start with the middle option: add.

This will allow you to choose which parts of the picture you want to select to cut out for your icon. You can change the selection brush size, but I always keep it at 3px because it keeps it really precise.

Drag your mouse over the area of the image that you want included in your icon. This tool will automatically choose parts of the image that are similar--for example, Taylor’s blonde hair will like all be selected around the same time, but the pink/blue background will not be, since it can tell that those are starkly different colors and thus two different objects in the picture. It should have a crawling ants moving line around the areas of the picture you want to select. If you go outside of what you want included in your icon, that’s ok! That’s why the subtract option is there. Just select that--to the right of the Add option--and go over what you do NOT want in your icon to get rid of it using the Subtract tool. You might have to go back and forth between those tools in order to get exactly what you want in the final product.

I can’t show you my final outline for Quick Selection since it goes away when I screenshot, but after you’re sure you got what you want in your moving ants line, it’s time to finalize it.

Remember, this tool effectively cuts out the selected portion of the picture from its background.

3. Refine Edge

On the top bar, click the big rectangle button that says Refine Edge. It will bring up a window that looks sort of like this, but I have settings adjusted the way I like:

You can change these settings any way you’d like, but I generally stick with this. It’s also okay to mess around with them and see how you feel. If you don’t want to do that, you can just use my settings and edit anything you don’t like later.

Click OK to cut.

This has pretty much removed the background from the picture and only left what we cut out and a transparent background (hence the checkered background--that is space that doesn’t actually exist). You can also see some shadow from the background around her arms and hair, which we can delete out later very easily. That is a result of the settings from Refine Edge, which is why some people choose to lower the Feather bar so that it doesn’t include as much shadow--which is good for many pictures since a lot of these are straight cuts, but this can occasionally cut out part of the icon you want to keep or make it look weird since you want just a little space to mess up when it comes to the Quick Selection Tool.

Bonus step if you want a selective colored icon:

Some people like really vibrant icons that include re-coloring. I’m not very good at it, but what I do (and it sometimes turns out well--this is typically the way people do it, though they are less sloppy than I am) is select a color from the Swatches at the right that is similar to the one that they want to paint over. For example, if I wanted to make Taylor’s hair more yellow/gold and vibrant, I will choose a yellow. Select the Paintbrush tool. On the top bar, the Opacity will likely be set to 100%, which will basically color right over the picture and look weird. Set the opacity to something very light--mine is 20%--and paint over the part that you want to color. Make sure you do this in one stroke--if you paint over her hair with 20% opacity once, let go of the mouse, then go over it again, it’s gonna start building up and becoming more opaque!

You can also completely recolor a picture this way, like if you wanted Taylor to have entirely pink hair, you can use this same method but choose the pink you want instead of a similar yellow. This can be very difficult and tedious, so I don’t typically selective color my icons, though occasionally I do because I love those icons with obnoxiously vibrant colors.

4. Open texture/create new background.

Ok, so I do both of these things depending on the background I want. I have some textures saved such as this that I use for icons:

I didn’t make it--it’s pre-made by another artist on tumblr from whom I downloaded their texture pack. You can make backgrounds like these too, but I’m not very good at them. 

SO you can either File > Open one of these pre-made backgrounds/textures, or you can make your own.

In order to do that, you can do File > New and change the settings to width: 100 pixels and height: 100 pixels. Under Background Contents, choose White. That’s very important! You don’t want transparent, it doesn’t help us. That brings up a new window on Photoshop next to the picture we’ve just cut out, just a small white square. You can paint that whatever color you’d like. Use the Paint Bucket tool and choose a color from the Swatches section on the right. This will make the background completely one color. However, if you want a gradient, you can do this several ways, but I do it like this: 

Click that, go to Gradient, and mess around with the Gradient options and see how you like the background. Here’s one I made, for example:

Boom! Background for icon. I will use this since I made it for this tutorial so yeah it might not look amazing but here we are.

IF YOU USED THE TEXTURE I JUST POSTED OR YOU KNOW THE TEXTURE YOU ARE USING IS NOT 100x100--THE ONE I POSTED BUT DID NOT MAKE IS 200x200--THEN YOU NEED TO RESIZE IT TO 100x100.

You can do this by going to Image > Image Size and changing the 200 pixels x 200 pixels (or whatever is there) to 100 x 100.

5. Duplicate layer

Now it is time to combine these two images we’ve created. Go back to the original picture we worked on--mine is Taylor at the BBMAs--and go to the right sidebar. You should have two copies of this image now: Background and Background Copy. Background Copy is the cut out picture we are using for the icon. Right click on Background Copy and select Duplicate Layer...

This will bring up a window that asks what you wanna do with this layer. 

Select the dropdown under Destination. Currently, the Document selected is the image we are already on (my Taylor pic was saved under 056.jpg) but we want to click the dropdown and select the pic that we are using for the background. In my case, it’s titled Untitled-1 since I didn’t change the name. Yours probably is too. Select whatever your background image is saved as and click OK.

Now go to the background image or texture that you just selected--your cutout should be there, but you can probably juuuust barely see it! That’s because your picture is about 3 times bigger than your background.

6. Resize layer

Use the Select tool--the very top icon on the left sidebar--and make sure Show Transform Controls is selected on the top bar. If it’s not, you’ll know--because you won’t be able to resize the image.

The square you are seeing (that isn’t the picture) is the layer we just duplicated onto the background, aka the icon. You’ll want to hold Shift and select the bottom right part of the image to resize to whatever you would like visible in the icon--it could be the entirety of the picture we cut out, or just part of it, if you realize you like how only part of it looks. Either way, you need to hold Shift while you do this, or else the image will NOT stay proportional, and it’ll look all wonky. Hold Shift the entire time you are resizing. This is what mine looks like:

You can see I both resized it and moved it a little to the right--you can use the Select tool to move it, but that might move it way too much since it does it incrementally, you can just use the arrows on your keyboard and move it by pixels which takes longer but is way more precise.

You can still see the shadows from the background on the icon, so select the Eraser tool (if the shadows bother you or you don’t like how it looks) and zoom waaay in. You want to be careful with the Eraser tool! (Also make sure Background Copy is still selected so you don’t accidentally erase the background. If you just have Background Copy selected while you erase, it will only erase whatever is part of that layer, it won’t bother the background).

While zoomed in, erase the pixels that are obviously discolored from the rest of the image. You can zoom in and out to check how you like it as it progresses. 

Here is mine after I used the eraser tool on any parts of the image I thought were bad! It should lay on the background naturally.

Now that we’ve figured that out...

7. Sharpen/action

Now is the time to apply an action! Please sharpen your icons. You want them to look good on your blog or others blogs, and in order to do that, you need to sharpen them.

If you already have actions uploaded, cool! If you don’t know how, well, I sure am going very in-depth here so you’re in luck. 

Download an action from any photoshop resource (or tumblr.com/tagged/photoshop-action is where I look occasionally). You will have to load them onto your Photoshop now. Click the button that looks like a movie Play icon on the right sidebar. This will bring up the Action list. Photoshop likely has pre-made actions for you, but we don’t use those because I never taught myself how to use those so maybe you can use them, I don’t know. I just use ones I download from Tumblr.

Click that little dropdown menu and click Load Actions...

This should bring up a file opener and you can select the action that you downloaded for this icon. It will download it into Photoshop and will now always be there--you don’t have to load actions every single time you want to use them. If you load them once, they should be there for the rest of forever.

Scroll down to find that action and select it. Now, make sure you still have Background Copy selected. I don’t care about applying an action to the background, just the copy,  which is still our image that we cut out. Click the Play button on the Action list--pictured above on the very bottom of the screenshot, next to the Circle and the Folder icon. This will apply the action to the background copy. (Hint: if the Play button isn’t available, it’s probably because your action is in a folder. Click the dropdown of the folder and click the first thing under it--that should be the action and it will apply it).

There it is with the action applied! It’s muuuuch sharper--perhaps a little too sharp, but that’s ok, it won’t look bad on people’s blogs.

8. Add a PSD

To apply a PSD, File > Open and choose the PSD you want to use. I listed above where I find most of my PSDs, just download one you like. You can choose 100 different ones and try it out if you want. I use the same one for everything, by @toxicpsds (I believe it’s #6). This should open a third window with the PSD over a sample image (thanks to the artist!). You just have to select the PSD layer--not the image with it--and Duplicate Layer and put it on the image that we have produced thus far. It is the same process as when we took our cutout and put it on the background. (The PSD is probably under a group--mine says Group 1--so just select the group in its entirety--shift-click it if you need to).

You can tell the background is also lighter. If you don’t want the color of the background affected by the PSD, select Background Copy and the PSD together, right click on one of them, and select Merge Layers. This will put the cutout and the PSD in the same layer, which should take the PSD off of the background and revert it back to the color we had before. However, I really like what the PSD did to the background, so I will keep it this way.

I am finished now with my icon! 

9. Save it for Web 

To save the icon to be able to post on Tumblr, go to File > Save for Web & Devices, which will bring up a window like this. It might look a little different since I have my settings a certain way, but whatever.

(Sorry this looks weird here, it’s just what happens when I screenshot. I’m not a tech wizard).

Your pre-saved things might look different, but make sure you are saving a a PNG-24 for the best quality. Just make your settings look like this, basically, then click Save.

There she is! All done!

If you have any questions, let me know! I tried to be really specific, but I’m not sure what level people are on Photoshop (probably better than I am) so just ask if I need to clarify anything!