#if i post the full screencap or just crop everything else out

[aceofwhump]

Hello @crispyliza !! So I'm replying in a separate post because this is too long for a reply on the post. Hope you don't mind. I also think it might benefit others who have asked me in the past and those wishing to start gif making. Especially with whumptober just around the corner.

So here's a full look at how I make my gifs. This got very long so I put it under a read more

A quick thing before I start: I use windows and google chrome. If you're a mac or firefox user I'm not sure of this will work for you in terms of programs. The techniques I use in photoshop should though.

Okay for this demonstration I'm going to show you how I made the gifs for this gifset

To start we need a video. I don't torrent because my internet connection will cut out a random which makes using vpns rather pointless. I've tried. My internet would cut out halfway through a torrent download and then my internet provider was notified to what I was doing. It was just not great. So I found a new way to download videos off the internet! You can use torrents though. If you've got a vpn, go for it.

There are several streaming sites that I go to to get my videos. 1movies, and bstsrs are my go to right now since soap2day is gone (rip i miss you).

Now there are three ways I can get a video depending on what website I'm using. Bstsrs is the easiest because they have a whole bunch of links available. I always go with mixdrop because it has an easy to use built in download button. Unfortunately this site doesn't have movies. Just tv shows and sometimes it's not the best quality or there aren't links available. That's when I go to 1movies. Once you've found your video I use the chrome extension Cococut to download it. Click the extension button to open, then the download button. Then you just have to wait until the video is rendered. Click save. Wait until its downloaded.

Okay we now have our video! The next step is to turn the scene you want to gif into frames. For this we're gonna need KMPlayer. This video player makes it really easy to turn scenes into frames/screencaps. Open your video. Find the the scene you want and pause the video. Type control-g to open this screen:

Here you choose the destination you want your frames to be saved. Decide what to name your frames and match up your settings with mine. You want to continuously extract frames, original size, and I stick with every 2 frames. Then, and this is important, choose video images only.

Now click start then start playing your video until the scene you want to gif is done. When you've got everything you wanted, pause the video. Hit ctrl-g again to reopen that screen and click stop. You now have all the frames you need so go ahead and exit out of KMPlayer. You don't need it again unless you need to redo frames or get the dialogue or something.

Next up we are gonna open Photoshop. I use Photoshop CC 2014.

Click on File -> Scripts -> Load files into stack -> Browse.

Go wherever you saved your frames and select the ones you need. Click okay and let the frames load completely before doing any thing else. Depending on how many you've selected this could take a while.

Once all of your frames are loaded, click "Create Frame Animation". Next click the little arrow button on right followed by "Make Frames From Layers" so we have all of our frames laid out. Now we need to reverse the frames because they're backwards so click that little button again and then click "Reverse Frames"

Okay you've got your frames loaded and all set to go. Time for all the cropping, resizing, setting the speed, and editing.

First thing I do is set the speed because otherwise I forget and it's important to do and a pain in the ass to do after all the editing is done. So do it first and get it out of the way. Select all of your frames. Click the little button beneath a frame where it says 0.0 and pick your time. I usually go for .1 seconds but .05 is also a popular speed. Just test one out and see which one you like best for your gif. You can hit the play button at any time to test your gif.

To set speed:

After this I do one of two things. Either I go into cropping and resizing or I separate frames. Depends on how many frames I uploaded. If I uploaded all the frames needed for an entire gifset this is the part where I separate them out onto individual gifs. So let's do that.

Originally I was just gonna do one gif but I have 115 frames uploaded which is waaaay too many for just one gif. I like to keep my gifs between 30 and 80 frames. So I'm going to split this into 3 gifs I think. It'll make a nice balanced gifset.

Select the frames you want for the first gif and copy them using the copy frames option in the same menu as the make frames from layers menu. Open a new document with the same dimensions as your current document. Click "Create Frame Animation" and paste the frames over the selected frame. Make sure that first frame is the same speed as all the other frames. Repeat until you have your desired gifs.

Next up I crop and resize. For this gif I'm going to first crop out the black bars above and below the image because we don't want that in the gif. Use the select tool to pick what you want to keep then "Image" then "Crop".

Now I could leave it as it but I think for this gifset I'm gonna focus more on Geralt so I'm going to crop it in a bit more.

Once cropping is all set i'm going to resize the gif to tumblr dimensions. Click "Image" then "Image Size" and change the width to 540px. The height can be anything and best not to mess with it so your gif keeps it's proportions. 540px is the width of a tumblr post and I plan on making these gifs stacked one on one.

Okay the gifs are all cropped and sized. Now it's time to do some editing. Go back to your first gif. We'll do all the work on this first gif and apply the same things to the other ones later because the scenes are the same. If they were different each gif would be colored and edited individually. First thing to do is turn it from frame animation to timeline. Timeline mode makes applying things like sharpening and brightness much easier and smoother.

So just click this button in the bottom left corner to go into timeline mode. Next up select all your layers. They're on the right side. Make sure you've selected ALL of them. Then click on "Filter" -> "Convert for Smart Filters" THIS IS AN IMPORTANT STEP! We can't edit until this is done.

This button to switch from frames to timeline:

First thing I do is sharpen. You can use one of the presets or try to do manually do it with smart sharpen. I use the preset labelled "sharpen" because I'm lazy and this one does a fine job for my gifs. I also add a layer of surface blur to smooth things out. Just a small touch. Like barely any blur but I think it smooths noise a bit and makes it look better.

Next up: Editing!! This step is going to be different for each and every gif you make. It all depends on the colors in the scene your giffing so you're gonna have to do a lot of experimenting to get the right look you want. Personally that's what I like about it. Makes it fun.

All your adjustments can be found found on the right side of the screen:

I almost always start with the "Levels" layer to brighten up the image because as we all know, every freaking whump scene is sooo dark. So with levels you just slide the little arrows around until you get a look you like.

Then I add a layer of "Curves". I love curves. With curves you can select the whitest white and the darkest black and the middle tone to change the brightness and colors of your gif. Or you can use this part and just brighten or darken a specific part. It's really versatile and i love it. It does take some practice and experimenting though.

Now a layer of "Contrast" and a layer of "Vibrance".

After this it's all about the selective colors, photo filters, and color balance to work on the colors and brightness. For this gif I'm only doing a tiny bit of editing cause I like the coloring but sometimes I'll have multiple layers of these to create a good coloring.

Once you're satisfied with how your gif looks it's time to save it!

Click "File" -> "Save for Web" and wait until it's all loaded. Important thing too look at here is the size of the gif. You can't upload any gif that is larger than 10mbs so make sure it's under that. Sometimes even 9.8 is too big because tumblr is a butt. I go for anything below 9.8. If your gif is too big try resizing it or removing a few frames. Make sure you gif is set to loop forever. Otherwise it'll just stop after a little bit. Don't forget to change this!

Here are the rest of my settings:

After that you can click save.

And that's it! You've made a gif! Congrats! If you have any questions or want clarification feel free to message me :)

[everypicofgenyashinazugawa]

[stellahibernis]

Lan Wangji: Armored in Silk and Lace

AKA Lan Wangji’s costumes in the Untamed, part 3/9

Today it’s time to discuss the outfit that’s definitely in contention for the title of Most Extra™. As usual, I’ll talk of the costume both in terms of what it consists of and how it ties to what’s going on in the plot.

Lan Wangji wears this outfit during the evil summer school in episodes 11 to 14, and is furious for about 90 % of the time. He also confesses his love, only for Wei Wuxian to pass out without actually hearing it, so things are going just great for him all in all.

The Costume

This was a fun one to analyze, because it looks fairly simple at a first glance, the silhouette is much like his first outfit, but when you start to really look at it, you’ll spot a lot of detail going on. Also for some reason getting good screencaps of this one was a nightmare, but I think you’ll get the gist even with what I got.

This outfit is notable for a couple of reasons; it’s his first completely white outfit (excluding the forehead ribbon and waist ornament, those are the same as always), his other fully white outfit is the next one. It’s also the first time there’s no cloud embroidery anywhere, the other time is the outfit he wears when they go to the temple in the end. I’ll talk of the in-universe reasons in the context section, but the fully white look is a very wise choice also from the costuming perspective.

As you can see above, the silhouette is once more a formal one, with the wide sleeves and the robe falling freely over sash. The color is pure white, as opposed to Nie Huaisang’s off-white in comparison, but you might go back and look at the first outfit for example, and notice the white here seems warmer than in any of his other white outfits. Usually, while the white fabric in LWJ’s costumes is always pure white rather than a tint of any kind, it takes a little of the blue hue from the inner robes. It obviously doesn’t happen here, and the fabrics used are also somewhat less shiny than in his other costumes, which helps it reflect the warm tones back (as opposed to the next, also all white outfit, which is made of shinier fabrics).

From costuming perspective the choice makes sense, because this outfit is worn outdoors under sunlight, in Qishan with its reddish light, and in the cave in firelight, all of which are environments where the full white works at least as well (natural sunlight) or better (Qishan and the cave) than with the blue underlayer. The textures of the fabric also look great especially in the dim light of the cave.

Now let’s get to the details! The most obvious thing is of course the lace overlay on the outer robe which is not only gorgeous, but a relevant factor in consideration whether this is the Most Extra™ outfit. I also love the texture of the fabric on the lapels and sleeve ends, with the same fabric also used in the layer below. In the title I called this outfit his armor, and it is so for him psychologically, which I’ll talk about later, but it’s also reflected in the very structured cut of the second robe, which has much starker pleating than his outfits usually do. There’s also a bit of lace in the panel on the front, and the sash is similarly criss-crossed as it was with his previous blue outfit.

I had to settle for a screencap of him crouching to get even a half decent look of the bottom of his robes, because mostly you can’t see half of the detailing. First, there is the panel of lace that continues all the way down in front, and you can also see the pressed pleating. Also, if you look at his right knee (resting on the ground), you can see yet another fabric that has a sort of circular texture going on (may have to zoom in on this one), again something that you’re likely to miss on the screen, but must have been great for Wang Yibo to know that every bit of the costume was as elaborate as LWJ’s should be.

And finally, my favorite detail and the one that in my book yields the title Most Extra™ for this outfit, the boots! Sorry about the awkward cropping, I didn’t want to have the leg wound visible, since that’s potentially a less than great surprise in a costume post, and this was pretty much the only scene where you could get a good look at the boots.

I mentioned in part 1 that it's a hell of a power move from the Lan Sect to have white boots in general, but look at these. Boots made of white brocade? Truly incredible, and obviously used here since we get a good look at them by virtue of LWJ’s leg wound. Once again I applaud the costuming department for commitment.

The Context

LWJ is back in white, which broadly means that he feels drawn to his duty to his sect more keenly, and in this case I’d argue it’s mixed with mourning for the burned Cloud Recesses and the loss of his home, hence the all white outfit. He’s also terribly vulnerable and alone when we first see him in Qishan, he’s escorted in by the Wens rather than arriving with an entourage like the others, he’s been questioned and beaten for who knows how long by that point, he’s injured and has to use his spiritual energy just to walk upright, and he’s worried about his family. Of course, he’s not going to let the Wens see it’s getting to him, and his outfit is one of the few things he can control, so he does, to a degree at least.

The lack of cloud embroidery might in-universe be because he was not allowed to have it, considering the embroidery acts as a talisman that can protect the wearer from some forms of harm (remember how in episode one the puppets didn’t like them).

They may be made of silk and lace, but his robes are his armor right then, the very formality and how impeccable they are despite everything is giving out the signal that even in these circumstances he’s still the Second Jade of Lan. It’s costing him though, and he again has drawn a wall around himself and doesn’t spare a glance at the others, including WWX, he’s laser focused on Wen Chao with all the fury he has. Of course, the day ends absolutely miserably with them having to relinquish their swords just to add insult to injury, and giving him even less things he has control over. (This is not a weapon design post, but Bichen is really pretty.)

There is a huge difference in the way he now interacts with WWX compared to where they left off in Qinghe, even taking into account that LWJ didn’t actually let WWX see quite how much he’d softened toward him, but now the barrier is fully up again, and WWX is doing his best to batter it down once more. He can of course see it’s different compared to how their early interactions were, now LWJ isn’t annoyed at him but just ignores him, likely at least partly out of necessity because he has no energy for anything else, but also because he’s so aware of representing his sect in this dangerous time, and he can’t afford to be distracted. WWX of course finds out only later what has happened since their parting, and then understands better why LWJ behaved as he did.

Of course, LWJ might be on his last legs and tied by his duty, but the fact he cares about WWX hasn’t changed, and while he can ignore both the questioning and the antics, he won’t just stand by and let him be hurt. This, of course, is a mutual feeling for the two of them, as we see later during the walk toward the cave. In fact, they’re on something of a mirrored journey right here, having to think of their duties toward their sects, but when push comes to shove, they will always help each other.

When they're left behind in the cave there is a brief lull in the push and pull conflict going on in both their hearts, and for a bit they can just focus on surviving together. WWX pulling LWJ’s ribbon off is a neat symbol for it, as if removing the duty for a bit, and the conversation following is fully personal even though their worry for their families is there at the back of their minds at all times.

There’s also the only moment of peace for LWJ while wearing this outfit; when he falls asleep and WWX gently covers him with his robes, and later in the morning puts his ribbon back on. LWJ really had no defence against falling in love with WWX, when assaulted both by the fact WWX isn’t at all bothered by the icy aloofness he portrays, and the casual caring acts.

After the relatively calm night it’s back to no fun times to be had, with WWX nearly dying in the aftermath of the battle. Here we get perhaps the most pointed example of how LWJ is at this point in his life pulled into two directions. He sings the song he composed and named after the two of them to WWX, even saying the name aloud and practically confessing to his feelings, and then leaving without waiting for WWX to wake up when they’re saved, because he knows that since he can, he needs to return to his family and see what they can salvage of their home. A “fun” thing for him to contemplate, by the way, is whether things would have gone differently when they reunited in episode 20 if he’d stayed at least to see WWX back awake. Who knows.

Next time we’ll have another fully white outfit and LWJ not having a particularly good time wearing it. Hopefully there’ll be plenty of scenes from which to get good screencaps, it feels like struggling with both the angst and difficulty of capturing should be too much to ask. 😅

(You can find the rest of this series via “lwj costume series” tag below, or through my blog contents page. I’d link for ease of access but the links make it disappear from tags, so. 😒)

[sersi]

Beginner Friendly Gif Tutorial (Part 1): The Screencap Method

This was requested by a anon earlier this week and, while I don’t think I do anything terrible unique with my gifs, I will do my best to explain my process. I’m going to be posting this tutorial in two parts, as it got super long 😅 and I think things will be easier to keep track of this way.

This first post is going to be focusing on how I set up my gifs (loading files into stack, cropping, converting to smart object, and sharpening). I use the screencap method 85% of the time, so that is what I’ll be focusing on here. I’ll be talking about my approach to coloring in the second post.

Please like or reblog if this tutorial helps you!!

So, before you can actually make a gif, you need to have the right tools. For me, these tools are: 

KMPlayer (for screencaps)

Photoshop CC (for everything else)

If you’ve made gifs before or looked at other tutorials, you are probably aware that there are two ways of getting started. Some people use the “video frames to layers” option in Photoshop, while others use the “load files into stack” option. The former requires video in a format Photoshop can read. The latter requires an external program such as KMPlayer capable of screencapping the moment you want. I use both methods, although I use load files into stack more frequently. Because of this and the fact that load files into stack is a bit more complicated, that is what I’ll be explaining today.

Step 1: Screencapping

For load files into stack, you need to first open your video in KMPlayer and screencap the moment you want to gif. These are the settings I use:

With your screencaps in hand, you can hop over to Photoshop. 

Step 2: Creating Your Timeline

In Photoshop, you need to open the menu and select “load files into stack”:

Once you do that, this box will appear:

You need to click browse and then select all the screen caps you want to use. 

Once you have all the caps you want to use, click “ok.” (I don’t recommend loading more than 100 to 150 at once, as the process is not the fastest. However, I have loaded more than 400 screencaps at once, so, depending on what you’re doing, the wait can be worth it).

Once your screencaps have loaded, you’ll see something like this on the side of your screen:

Now you need to select all layers by scrolling down to the bottom, holding down shift, and selecting the last layer. Then (and you will need the timeline window showing for this), you need to click “create video timeline”.

Once you’ve done that, your timeline should look something like this:

Next, you need to select those three little boxes on the bottom left. That’s convert to frame animation. You should end up with this:

Now, you need to go over to the right side of the timeline, click the three little lines, and then select “make frames from layers” from the menu that pops up:

You will end up with this:

It might look we’re ready to go, but, there are a few more things that we need to do before we can really get down to business. First, you need to select all frames and set the frame delay:

Click “other” and set the frame delay to .05:

Now (and this is the last thing we need to do before we get to the business of actually making our gif), we have to reverse the frames. When you use the load files into stack method, your frames are loaded in reverse order. So, before we start cropping and coloring, we need to fix that.

In order to fix that, you need to head back to that little menu on the right side of the timeline bar and click “reverse frames”:

Once that is done, your gif is ready to be cropped and resized!

Step 3: Cropping and Resizing

When making gifs for Tumblr, you want to make sure you are using the correct widths:

540px for full width gifs

268px for 2 per row gifs

177/178/177px for 3 per row gifs

Gifs that are not wide enough will look fuzzier and lower quality once stretched on Tumblr and gifs that are too wide will make it harder to stay under the 3mb size limit.

Beyond that, you can really size things how you wish. Very big and tall gifs, very short and skinny gifs, etc. It just depends on what you’re trying to do and what dimensions will best serve that. The larger your dimensions (particularly if you’re giffing a scene with a lot of movement), the less frames you will be able to fit under the 3mb mark.

For this gif, I’m going with 540px x 275 px.

With your dimensions entered, a cropping box will have appeared on your image and you can drag it or shrink it as you wish.

I like where Steve is positioned in the frame, so I’m just going to leave it as is and click the checkbox. 

After my frames have been cropped, I like to click on “image” and then select the “canvas size option” in order to smooth out the edges:

I remove 2 px from both the height and the width to help smooth out the edges. Click okay and then click proceed:

Now, we can FINALLY resize things for Tumblr. Go back to the image menu at the top, click “image size”, enter your width (the height should automatically change with it), and then click OK:

Step 4: Convert to Smart Object

With things now resized and ready to go, click select all layers again, and then click “convert to video timeline” (the little symbol on the bottom left of the timeline):

This will give you something that looks like this:

From here, you need to go to the filter menu and click “convert for smart filters”:

With that done, you’ll have something that looks like this:

Step 5: Sharpening

Because we’ve converted our file to a smart object, we can sharpen everything all at once. Go up to the filter’s menu and select smart sharpen:

These are my settings:

After this, I add a bit of Gaussian Blur, so you will need to head back up to the filter menu:

These are my settings:

(.3 is a more common setting and I use it sometimes, but I have generally found that I like .2 a bit better for some reason).

So, at this point, you have the basics of how to physically set up your gif and can basically color things however you want. If you already have a method of coloring you like (or aren’t terribly interested in how I color my gifs), feel free to skip the second half of this tutorial 👍🏽!!

P.S. if you are going to regularly gif and plan to use the screencap method, I highly recommend creating your own Photoshop actions to automate and speed up these steps.

[alwaysaprille]

Hi Friends:

I hope you’ll reblog this, not in an attempt to keep the drama going, but in an attempt to help me defeat the libel that @sometimesrosy is currently spreading about me. I was not going to respond, and in fact did not even know she’d tailored an attack on me until someone else alerted me to the fact.

 I’ve been attacked numerous times, by many people and I very rarely respond because I know myself to be the bigger person, but I do not take kindly to being accused of racism, upholding racist systems, and trying to take away someone’s “POC identity”, so I’d like to show you guys what actually happened and hope that you can see that lies are being spread with malicious intent. 

I hope that after reading this post you all will begin to see that Rosy @sometimesrosy uses lies, manipulation and deceit in an effort to make herself appear to be the victim when she is in no way that. Please stop giving this woman your time and effort, she is not worth it. 

This will be a long post. Thank you for any time you’ll spend reading it.

It began when Rosy posted a meta about Thelonious Jaha that I did not agree with. The meta is linked above. I posted a vague post linked here but seen below:

Later in the day I received an anonymous ask that I responded to. Linked here but I will post below in it’s entirety for convenience (the beginning of the ask that’s “grayed” are screencaps of Rosy’s original Jaha meta):

If you managed to stick around through all of that ^^^ Thank you! I really appreciate your patience. As you can see (if you read everything), I never mentioned the person who wrote the original meta in my response. I never singled her out in any way. I made sure to crop out her URL in my response to avoid confrontation. 

I did not use any personal or emotional support for my response and made sure that I based my response in facts and evidence provided within the canon of the show and it’s creators. Nothing I did was an attempt to lambaste Rosy for her views. Even when I point out the anti-Black racism so prevalent in the entire fandom’s view of Jaha, I was not singling out Rosy. That’s why I said “y’all” meaning “you all” meaning a group of people. 

At some point, someone decided to tell Rosy that I had written a response to her meta. I assume she read it. I hope that she read it before composing the response that she did, because it’s always best to have an informed opinion.  I’m now going to share with you all Rosy’s response to my meta rebuttal (which is a full on written attack on me), linked here and posted in screenshots (which I will respond to as necessary):

In this screenshot, her 4th point is the age old “I have Black friends!” excuse, only applied to fictional characters. “I like these 2 Black characters, therefore my disdain for this other black character can’t possibly be rooted in anti-Black racism!!!

In the 2nd screenshot, Rosy attempts to imply that my only possible perspective could be from the Black perspective ( ”Her perspective is, and has always been from the Black perspective.”), as Rosy knows nothing of my personal background she can not make the assumption that my analysis of Jaha is only valuable “from the Black perspective”. 

She then goes on to say that her “interpretation of Jaha, is explicitly about class. I say it again and again. Privilege, Elitist, Civil Uprising, Inequality, Injustice, Classism.” as if I did not mention in my own analysis of Jaha that he comes from a place of privilege:

She then goes on to say that: “I got a scholarship to go to college and got educated, (something that April is seemingly offended by) and I learned how to speak up.” 

I also received a scholarship to go to college, a full ride for all 6 years (I have a Bachelor’s and a Master) on my (educational) merit. In fact, most people I know require some sort of financial assistance to obtain a higher education now.  My only problem with Rosy’s education is that she consistently behaves as if her English degree means that her analysis/meta/theories/etc are in anyway better/more adept than anyone else’s. 

Her next paragraph segues into the definition of intersectional feminism. She correctly points out that it was a term coined by a Black woman (although she does not mention her name:  Kimberlé Crenshaw) some 30 yrs ago and that it is about more than just the intersection of racism and sexism, but all women who have an additional minority label (LGBTQA, disabled women, immigrants, etc.). I don’t know why this topic was relevant as, again, in my original commentary on Rosy’s post, I never mention her name, URL or any other information that would enable you to immediately identify the poster as Rosy. 

In this 3rd screenshot we have a continuation of what intersectional feminism means (which is again, irrelevant to my response to her meta as, in my original commentary on Rosy’s post, I never mention her name, URL or any other information that would enable you to immediately identify the poster as Rosy.)

She, for whatever reason, brings up the major descriptors of my identity that most of you are aware of (that I am Black, and bi, and a proud single mother) and then brings up her own descriptors. She states that I can not understand her intersection (when what she means is her perspective), even while she attacks the points I make as a Black woman speaking about a Black character. 

Her next paragraph is, I assume, an attempt to convey the seriousness of her message. 

“We don’t have to talk or read each other’s meta at all.  But you don’t get to slander my name. You’re the one who has been doing this in public. “

As to the first sentence: I do not speak to Rosy and do not actively read her meta, nor do I search it out, because 10 times out of 10 I know that I will not agree with her opinions as they tend to not be based in the facts and evidence of the canon. As to the second sentence: I can not “slander” her name via tumblr or Twitter posts as slander is a false spoken statement. The proper noun to use would be “libel” (written defamation) which again, would have to be proven false in order to actually be called libel. As to the the third sentence: I have been doing what in public? As noted I wrote one response to Rosy’s post and in my original commentary on Rosy’s post, I never mention her name, URL or any other information that would enable you to immediately identify the poster as Rosy.

She further states that I have been “vague blogging, and let’s stop trying to build a case against my ethnicities and identities, hmm? The worth of my POC identity is not yours to decide. My existence as an oppressed minority is not yours to erase.)”

In going through my blog, my last tumblr post about Rosy was on June 26th, 2017, post linked here (the last reblog mentioning her was on July 31st, 2017): 

Prior to that it was sometime in March (which you can verify by going to my blog and searching “rosymamacita”

If by “trying to build a case against my ethnicities and identities” she means the times I have (rightfully) pointed out when her feminism wanders into the white feminism zone she is again mistaken. White feminism can be upheld by WOC as all it is is a form of feminism that focuses on the struggles of white women while failing to address forms of oppression faced by women of color and women lacking other privileges. White feminism also comes into play when you excuse the treatment of MOC by white women, something Rosy does often. 

She says that the worth of her “POC identity is not yours to decide.” First, she has used POC as an adjective here, when “POC” short for Person of Color is a noun and thus should not be used in this form (something an English major should know), and then attempts to say that I have ever attempted to strip her ethnicity from her. I have never spoken of Rosy’s ethnicity on my blog in any capacity because her personal identity is not mine to discuss. 

In this screenshot, she states (In all caps) that I “ignored everything that she said about class and injustice” (when again I did not, you can see that I addressed the privilege that Jaha, Abby, Clarke and Wells have in my response to her meta) in an attempt to invalidate her experience as a poor person. 

She then says “I don’t know April’s background” and she’s right, none of you do. Maybe I should inform you of some of it:

My name is April, I was born on January 13th, 1990 in Detroit, MI to a single mother, who was born to a Black mother and an abusive White father (this makes my mother a mixed race person, and myself a quarter White.). For the first year of my life my mother did not have a job and my father refused to support me. My mother enrolled herself in law school, she went at night and took me with her, because there was no one else that she could ask for help. I have gone to private school my for most of my educational career (I went to a public high school and a public university), but it cost my mother (what it cost I will not add here, because that is her story). At some point, my relationship with my mother became toxic and unhealthy. She has been at times, both physically and verbally abusive. I have been involved in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship (which resulted in my child), I raise him alone, with no financial help from his father who continues to work hard to ensure that he maintains some form of control over my life (through our child). I struggle with depression daily. I am blessed in that the career path I chose was one that pays well, but that was my choice, as it was Rosy’s to choose an English degree, which might not have been as lucrative. I am blessed that I am able to take care of my son with no financial, emotional or physical help from the vast majority of my family. I do not delight in my privilege, nor do I wave it in people’s faces. 

She presumes that I think the Black/White divide is most important, when I know, and you know if you’ve ever taken any time to peruse my blog, that I do my best to draw attention to all issues, even if I can only speak directly to my own experience as a Black woman in a white dominated world.  She states that I have actively tried to erase her voice every time she speaks up, but I have never done this. If you go to my blog and type “Rosy” in the search bar, you can easily verify this yourself. I believe in facts and concrete evidence and so I am striving to provide it for you today.

In this screenshot she has gone to my blog and found this post, linked here: 

and attempts to...somehow, make this about her? Somehow, this anon’s question and my answer (eight days before today’s incident and four days before her meta was written) are an “attack on her personally.” even though Rosy is not mentioned by name, URL or otherwise. She claims that I am not “using the correct terms.”, that I am “using ‘Mexican’ to be interchangeable with ‘Hispanic’” even though I am only using the anons wording (I do this as a courtesy to all anons because I do not like to assume that someone’s first language is English and want to make sure that my response is easier to interpret. She assumes that I have not done “any research to understand the situation.” This is false. I always research asks about racial and ethnic identity. As an aside: I did check in with my Cuban friend Mik ( @octanakin​) to be sure I was not being offensive or racist in any way, and she advised me that I was not. 

She says that I am “wrong and severely simplistic in my understanding.” It’s a two word answer, of course it’s simplistic. 

She then states: “When I fill out my taxes. There are two boxes. “white–non latino or hispanic” and “latino or hispanic.” I can NOT choose white, because I am latinx.” 

Just so everyone knows....when you fill out your taxes there is no box where they ask you to racially self-identify (source: my mother is a taxation and real estate attorney and also):

She says that “Latinx is not a race. We can be ANY race, white, black, indio, asian.” If you go back to the anon ask she’s referencing you’ll clearly see the part where I say: “But not all Hispanic and Mexican people are white.” soo...her argument here in a non-sequitur, as we’ve said the exact same thing. 

She goes on to say that I told her and other Latinx and disabled people that Raven Reyes was bad representation, this is laughable, because it is widely known that Raven is my 2nd favorite character on The 100, with that said, I’m sure she is referencing this post, linked here:

or this post, linked here, where I clearly give “ownership” or Raven to disabled and Latinx people while maintaining my stance that constant physical torture does not equal good representation. I think it’s laughable that me saying “Raven Reyes is tortured too much outside of natural pain originating from her disability” somehow equals “Raven Reyes is bad representation”:

In this screenshot she states, even though she admittedly has no knowledge of my own family history, decides that I am speaking over mixed race people (even though my mother is a Mixed Race individual herself). She says that speaking up about Octavia’s constant abuse of the Black people in her life (Lincoln and Indra) and the Asian men in her life (Bellamy and Ilian) is somehow invalidating her mixed race family and interracial relationships, even as I staunchly defend Bellarke (an interracial ship), Briller (an interracial ship), Marper (an interracial ship), etc, etc, etc. 

She implies that I was the person who told her that she was “speaking over darker skinned people and I should be quiet”, when in fact she received that message via an anon (and I have only ever sent one anon message in my entire tenure on this site-it was not to Rosy). With this statement: “ I am still not sure how April was seen as more of an authority on my history, my ethnicity, my identity and my experience because she is darker skinned.” she handily types out a lie, as I have never spoken about Rosy’s history, ethnicity, identity or experience. 

More to the point, perhaps people choose my stance over hers on Linctavia and Octillian because they also did not like the ships, and as a Black woman, my voice on topics involving anti-Black racism (like the kind found in Octavia’s relationship with Lincoln and Indra) should be elevated above someone who is not Black? She also handily ignores that I have a mixed-race family (which again, she admitted she had no knowledge of), that one of my grandfather’s was white, that my step-grandmother (My grandfather remarried after my grandmother ran from his abuse) was white, that my cousin has married a white woman (they have a daughter), that my uncle has married a white woman (they have a son), I could go on, but I hope that you all understand that my family is very diverse. 

In this screencap, she states that “It’s a shame that we can’t have a conversation about this, because colorism is absolutely real, as is internalized racism in the POC community.” She makes it seem as if I am the reason that we can’t have conversations about this, when the past proves that every time anyone has ever tried to point out to Rosy that as a lighter-skinned POC she has light-skinned privilege (this is a huge part of colorism) she someone decides that they are attacking her right to identify as a WOC. 

She then tries to sneak in the bit about internalized racism, which she is using incorrectly! I cannot exhibit internalized racism towards Rosy, because as she has made sure to point out many times, we are not the same ethnicity! I am Black and Rosy is Latina. Internalized racism is the internalization by people of racist attitudes towards members of their own ethnic group, including themselves. This means that both Rosy and I would have to be the same ethnicity in order for me to exhibiting internalized racism. 

Then she goes and discusses anti-miscegenation, as if I, the child of a mixed race mother whose parents married in the late 40s and lived in Tennessee would have no idea the effect that could have on people. She says I am being anti-miscegenatic and upholding racist ideals, when I have literally never said anything against interracial marriage or relationships and in fact have numerous posts, linked here, here, here, here, here, and here, (and there are more if you care to search “interracial relationships” on my blog) in support and defense of them. 

She keeps harping on this idea that I have ever said that Rosy is not a WOC:  “That she mocks me for saying I have an english degree, as if I as a POC (because I am April, no matter what you decide counts) didn’t have to work harder than the privileged white folk to get it, as if it wasn’t an accomplishment for someone born and raised in the ghetto “

When again, I don’t mock her for having an English degree, I mock her for pretending as if her English degree somehow makes her meta better than those of us who do not have English degrees. She tries to reinforce how hard she had to work to get her degree, as if I, a Black woman born and raised in Detroit, MI, have no idea how hard it is for POC to get degrees. 

She continues to say that I have ever called her white: “I don’t know if she’s aware that the way she tries to call me white and white feminist and invalidate my heritage is EXACTLY what she called racist when the CLantis did it to Bob. I don’t know if she is aware that she’s following their path of harassment and personal attacks.”

When the truth is that as noted above, white feminism can and is frequently perpetrated by POC!!! She tries to make my pointing out that a lot of her ideas about feminism when it comes to fiction align with those of known white feminists on this site equivalent to Cl/xas actively calling Bob Morley white, when I have never done this. 

She posted these screencaps (which are still on my Twitter, FYI, because I delete nothing and pull receipts on myself all day everyday) as evidence that I harrass and personally attack her, but please note the date (August 13th-over 4 months ago) and conveniently leaves out that this was a blatant full frontal attack because she and her group of white feminist friends attacked several WOC (not just myself in quick succession, over the course of about 3-5 days). 

If you’d like to see the “personal attack on her” it’s in the linked video and amounts to about 30 seconds of time, I have not mentioned or thought about Rosy since. 

She says those tweets (which again have dates) are because she called my theory bad or because she didn’t agree with my meta, when in fact they were because she raged an all out assault on a friend of mine @luisadoliveira because she dared to have a different thought than Rosy. She laughingly states that I can’t separate my meta from my self-worth when Rosy is the one who, every time, without fail, reacts like a nuclear explosion every time someone is too critical of her own meta. I’m beautiful, an excellent mother, loved, and capable of taking care of myself. That’s where my self-worth is. 

I’m not even in the Bellarke fandom anymore, precisely because of people like her, but for some reason she thinks that I care what this fandom has to say about me, lmao. 

Then she says this, let’s run through the check points:

She’s right, I don’t like her.

She’s wrong. I haven’t mentioned her name since September 1st, 2017 in a youtube video. 

I’m stalking her, but she’s the one who pulled screencaps from my twitter (which I did not give her access to and on which she does not follow me), she’s the one who responded to my professional, facts only dissection of her meta with a balls to the walls personal attack (which by the way falls into those handy harassment and bullying claims she’s making). 

She says I’m using ad hominem attacks (for those of you who don’t know that means you’re attacking the person and not their point) when my original reblog of her meta very clearly never mentioned her name and ONLY discussed her points, and this one still does not attack her person, even as she does nothing but attack me.) And one more time: You can’t say “POC” identity, because POC isn’t an adjective!!!

She says that “Calling people racist is my most powerful attack” when I clearly said it was unintentional racism exhibited by the entire fandom, not just her. And then tries to soothe that statement by calling me smart. I am well aware of my intellect, thank you, I did not need a boost from her. More to the point, in my original rebuttal of her meta, I only used factual evidence from the show to make my point, indicating that I was smart enough to tear apart her point without resorting to personal attacks, something you can clearly see that Rosy is not capable of. 

She thinks that I’m afraid because she grew up in the Bronx. This is the internet. We’re never going to meet in real life and it’s really easy to attempt to be big, bold and threatening online. Where you are from is not an indication of how “hard” you are, which is why you don’t see me constantly saying “I’m from Detroit!” as if it will add legitimacy to my claims. 

“I won’t respond to your rebuttal”. I’m fine with that. You’ve been blocked for 6 months and ignored for longer than that. These constant attempts to stir up drama that does not exist reflective poorly on you, Rosy, not me. This rebuttal isn’t about tearing you down,it’s about clearing the name that you have horrible besmirched with your lies and falsehoods. 

I hope you block everyone who agrees with me. Because they don’t deserve to be inundated with the lies that you spread about anyone who disagrees with you. 

She states that I don’t matter to her, but she took the time to compose a 2k word lie-fest about me even though I never mentioned her at all in my rebuttal of her Jaha meta. 

Finally, the last page of this nonsense. She somehow implies that I ever encouraged her to respond to my rebuttal of her meta when I did not! And Rosy, everyone knows that the second someone disagrees with you on a large enough platform you open your laptop and type unabashed lies and hate about that person, just as you have today. 

Be advised: I have documentation to prove that everything you’ve stated in your post today is false, if I hear that you have ever deemed yourself worthy (since you like that word) of typing my name again, I will absolutely pull this piece and present it before a court for a libel lawsuit. I have an attorney, and my mother can put me into contact with several more. 

End this before I have to.