#i went to see the doctor

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

why is it that the first time i really have the motivation and urge to write, my dumbass tendonitis flares up to be like "oh, you wanted to use those wrists, did you?"

[inkskinned]

the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

[nipuni]

THE DOCTOR We had a pact, him and me. Every star in the universe, we were going to see them all.

My version of The Master and The Doctor in their Academy days 😊

A speedpaint video of this will be available at my Patreon on april 1st!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

An unbothered queen has entered, and subsequently left.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[voiice-of-the-soul]

It irritates me alot when people say that making medic more compassionate is ''missing the point of his character'' when he is literally shown to be in the comics.... did you miss the part where he showed concern for both sniper and miss pauling's well being in comic 5 and 6.

His actions are a combination of genuine attachment + clinical interest and these things do not cancel out one another. He is always pushing boundaries and going against the grain and i think this is what led to him losing his license in the first place. He felt stifled by the rules imposed on him.

He is shown to be extremely passionate so it makes sense that he would use his endless fascination with medicine as a way to show his affection. He loves his friends so he will find a way to make them borderline indestructible. Malpractice is his love language.

[cordycepspog]

Things that absolutely fucked my shit up this episode, an incomprehensible list:

- Ellie liked the smell of Frank’s sleeping bag

- Joel still wearing Frank’s shirt

- Joel staying up all night to guard while Ellie slept

- “They’re not gonna hit you. Look at me, they’re not gonna hit you.”

- “Mom! Mom! Mom!”

- The way the doctor gave the lines “I delivered you. I held you in my hands.” and “I’m your doctor” so simply when asked for reasons why he shouldn’t be killed

- Ellie’s smile when Joel tried to tug the gun from her hand

- The way Joel bumbled his way through trying to make sure Ellie was okay, and ask if she wanted to talk about it after she shot Bryan

- All of the superhero drawings on the wall that Sam drew of him and Henry

- The mask that Sam had drawn on his face

Something about how everyone is undeniably human, and how unafraid they are of not shying away from that.

[expelliarmus]

[distantnebula4]

i get not liking thoschei, everyone ships what they ship-- but it’s a bit strange to me when people just completely deny it’s existence. how do you watch any twelve and missy episode and think ‘oh yeah, just enemies. nothing has ever happened there’

[jadedgenasi]

The more I think about Carla the worse it all feels. RTD did a Racism For Idiots episode and that's cool, but did anyone look over the optics of not only Ruby calling her bio mom her "real" mom in front of Carla, but sitting next to her instead of between her two moms (as in, near Carla)? How many people looked at the part where Carla without Ruby states that she only keeps kids for the money and went "hmm yeah that seems fine," like. I've watched enough British TV to know there's a huge fucking blind spot with them as a whole re racism, especially with regard to black people, but what the fuck. It tastes nasty. And it could have been solved so, so easily by acknowledging - reinforcing - that Carla is Ruby's mother. A large portion of the time we got with Carla wasn't even real, and those times were super shitty.

[sentientsky]

doctor the explorer

[deadpoetemi]

I can’t explain it but Rita and Roddy from flushed away are Donna and ten from doctor who

Like these are the same freaking pictures. It feels like a fever dream.

[chiropteracupola]

granby + iskierka + keynes

[they-hermes]

sorry you had to go through all that springer, hope you get better

from this first piece

[spydoclovr69420]

I desire Deca lore. I want Academy lore. I wanna see that little shit murder a kid in defense of his bestest friend. I wanna see Koschei freak out because Theta got his ass lost in the Cloisters and came out not long later raving about how much time had passed, how the sliders helped him escape even though he was so so scared of them. I wanna see them run through the fields of Koschei's father's land, chasing each other because they have all the time in the world. I want to see them laying together in those fields and ducking into alleyways skipping class and hiding from Borusa.

[tititilani]

I am the biggest fan of whump and self esteem issues ever in fic but you know what I would love to see? An "I believe in her (him)" moment. (dw fans ifykyk)

Just imagine it.

Some monster of the week is wrecking havoc. It feeds on sadness, terror, all the bad stuff, and it has found a feast in Edwin. All of that pain from seven decades in hell marinated in his hell-tempered soul means that it can feast on him for a long time already without worrying about its meal dissolving from the stress.

It snatches Edwin in the middle of them trying to vanish or destroy it, whisks him away over the crumpled body of Crystal, of Niko, of Charles. It straps him down with manacles of iron and Edwin stares it down without flinching even over the loud sizzling and pops of his own skin bubbling. But even if he's stoic, his pain is still delicious.

"Your friends are dead," it hisses to him with a vicious chuckle designed to make a shiver race down Edwin's incorporeal spine. Which it does. "They never cared about you. They never wanted you, probably were thankful I took you off their hands."

The thing is, Edwin has no way of knowing if it's telling the truth or not. His friends could be dead, had been left lying limp there on the ground, or worse in the case of Charles, who is already dead.

It has him at its nonexistent mercy for hours, poking at his weak spots both physically and mentally. Physical pain, it finds out, doesn't give up much of a meal, though the particularly distant look Edwin adopts is fetching. It doesn't do any significant damage because it wants this meal to last but Edwin has still resorted to his death state when it changes tactics.

Emotional pain, it knows from plenty of experience, can be the most delicious pain.

"I think that friend of yours - the one with the earring - probably was thankful I took you off his hands," it says offhandedly, tone almost too casual for the vicious words it's spitting. "Do you think he started celebrating immediately or maybe waited a few minutes?"

But it doesn't work the way it's intended.

Edwin, bloodied and vulnerable in his nightclothes, pushed past a point most ghosts wouldn't have been able to handle without breaking, looks up at the thing. His wrists have been bound this entire time, the skin around the manacles blackened and oozing ectoplasm, and he looks vulnerable.

But the look he gives the monster is not.

Edwin's gaze is vicious, the normally warm green replaced by shard of green glass, and the monster can see the strength and resolve in his eyes and realizes it may have miscalculated.

"I have seen the worst of people, and monsters," Edwin says with every ounce of scorn he can summon. "I spent seventy years in hell surrounded by them and I do not believe in much anymore. If there is one thing I believe in, I believe in him."

Cue Charles smashing his way in ten seconds later to save the day, looking at Edwin in awe, like he is seeing him for the first time all over again, faced with the steadfast faith Edwin has in him even when he has been given no reason to still.

[whoify]

photopea gif tutorial!

i recently started learning the craft of gifmaking with the free software photopea. when i first started, i had to piece together several different tutorials as well as extrapolate from some photoshop tutorials because-- no one uses photopea.

but they should! it's free! it can run in your browser! it can do most everything photoshop can do and you don't have to deal with adobe or torrenting. so i'm making a tutorial of my photopea gifmaking process because that's what i needed a couple months ago, and i hope it can be of use to some others. let's go!

1: PREPARING

source the scene you want to gif. it's best to download your video when you can, but screen recording can work in a pinch. this is the video downloader software i use.

once the source video is downloaded, i like to pick out the specific moments i'm going to gif and save them as their own files-- this makes future steps easier. an individual gif shouldn't be more than 4ish seconds, so limit your selections to about that. name your files in a way that makes sense to you:

2: CONVERTING TO .JPG

i like to convert my video clips to .jpg format. it is possible to load video clips directly into photopea, but unless it is a very short <30fps clip, it is likely to freeze or crash in my experience. i use this website as it downloads a higher framerate (~25fps) than others i've used.

convert your video files and download the .zip folder containing your frames. make sure to unzip them and name them something helpful if you need to.

3: OPENING YOUR FRAMES IN PHOTOPEA

photopea looks like this when you open it:

select "open from computer" and select only the first frame of your first gif:

your environment should look like this (ignore the other projects i have open, you should just have 0001.psd or similar):

go to file> open and place, and select ALL of the rest of the frames from your first clip:

they'll load in one by one, and your environment should look like this:

notice how all the frames have a little square in the corner? that means they are smart objects, and we need them to not be for our purposes. select all of your frames, right click, and choose rasterize:

in order to make the series of jpgs move as a gif upon download, select all of your frames and go to layer> animation> make frames:

all your layer names should now start with _a_. you can really do this at any point in the process so it's not a big deal if you forget at the beginning.

finally, you want to limit the frames in individual gifs to around 50 or less. if you find you have more, delete some frames off of the beginning or end by right clicking and selecting delete.

4: CROPPING AND RESIZING

select the crop tool on the left hand panel:

at the top bar, select fixed size:

gifs on tumblr are limited to 540px wide for single column gifs, 268px for two columns, and 178px for three columns. the height is up to you; i like to use 350px height with the 540px width.

enter your values into the W and H fields and do not press enter yet. drag the cropped area to where you want it to be-- try to line up the top and bottom edges so as not to lose too much of your image. once you're satisfied with the selection, press enter. your gif is now cropped and resized to tumblr standards.

5: SHARPENING

(if you are working with low-qual video, check out this tutorial by @hellboys before sharpening. basically filter> filter gallery > grain, select soft and play with the settings. then proceed!)

still making sure all of your layers are selected, navigate to filter> sharpen > smart sharpen:

you should see this dialog box:

these are the settings i like to use, but you can play around to see what you like. here's the before and after of my sharpening settings:

the difference will be more noticeable once we complete the next step-- brightening and coloring.

6: BRIGHTENING & COLORING

navigate to layer > new adjustment layer:

at any time, you can edit your adjustment layers by clicking this button in the right hand panel:

for each edit you make to your gif, you will add a new adjustment layer. always make sure they're at the top of your layer stack. i like to start with adjusting the brightness and exposure, which are both pretty straightforward.

additionally ,you can select a curves adjustment layer, choose the RGB channel, and drag the curve just slightly upwards to further brighten your gif, like so:

here's a before and after:

now for coloring-- i mostly use the saturation/vibrance, curves, color balance, and selective color adjustment layers. just play around with all of these until you find a style you like. i like my gifs to look really bright and colorful, so i push the saturation and try to draw out warmer tones in the color balance:

7: CAPTIONS

the font i like to use for captions is arial bold italic. you can download it (or any font of your choosing) from pretty much any free font website. if you choose to download a font not in photopea, go to file> open and select your font; it will now show up in the list of fonts.

navigate to the text button in the left hand panel:

and type in the captions for your gif. i make the font size 20 for 540px gifs.

next, while only your text layer is selected, navigate to layer> layer style > blending options:

click on drop shadow, and play around with the settings until you get something you like. here's mine:

next, click on stroke and do the same thing:

when you're done, make sure your text is your top-most layer.

8: EXPORTING

you're done! head to file> export as> GIF. you'll be prompted with a dialog that looks like this, with your gif playing (you can also do these steps without saving if you want a preview of your gif during editing):

the only thing you should need to adjust is speed. this is the main difference between photopea and photoshop. the only way to specifically adjust the delay in photopea is to manually enter "_05" (or whatever amount of delay) at the end of every layer name. if you're like me you'll agree that is simply too much and settle for the speed slider.

i don't really know what logic governs the speed slider. it doesn't seem to be consistent across gifs, so play with it until it looks right. i've had it on 200% lately which seems insane but looks visually normal.

once the speed is adjusted, hit save and you're done! here's a final before and after of all the work:

BONUS: SAVING .PSD PRESETS

did you think manually creating and editing all those adjustment layers was a lot of work? here's how to streamline it for next time.

at the very bottom of your screen, below your layers, select the icon that looks like a folder (third from the right).

it will create another layer called folder 1. drag your adjustment layers into this folder, making sure they stay in the same order. your layers should look like this when you're done:

ONLY ONCE YOU HAVE SAVED YOUR GIF, delete all other layers that are not in the folder. then select file> save as PSD. save it somewhere convenient.

next time you're making gifs, after you've cropped and sharpened your frames, select file > open and choose your .psd file. it will open as another project. select the layer that says folder 1, and drag it to whatever project you're working on at the top bar. voila! your adjustment layers are applied to your new gif!

i still like to play with the settings, as coloring and brightness needs will differ from gif to gif.

thanks for reading! here's the gifset i made while making this tutorial :-)