#obv ill only post what tumblr can handle

[defensivelee]

and if I drew William in even....freakier situations

[neopuff]

hello, i hope you're having a good day!! i was wondering, do you have any tips for making amvs? like, what programmes you use, how you handle the timing, etc. thank you for all the fun edits you make!!

hi!! sorry for the delay in answering this, i just wanted to take the time to answer it thoroughly and i kept forgetting lol & thank you! i already typed this once and tumblr made it disappear so i apologize if anything i say comes out short ‘cause i’m just trying to remember all that i typed before lol

ok so ill just go through my general editing process in Vegas, i dont know any other program well enough to talk about it at length:

(disclaimer: this is just how i do it, i dont watch tutorials and my editing friends and i don’t watch each other edit often so i would assume that my way is very different from other ways you’ve probably seen! i might even do something in a very stupidly hard way, please feel free to tell me if theres an easier way to do anything lol)

1. Song: So skipping past the “choosing song and ship/character/show” theme, I’ll dive straight into CUTTING THE SONG! I’m not about that Editing The Entire Song life, and neither is most of the editing community anymore, so I cut it up into a shorter thing that I’m better equipped to edit to. I’m just using a random example but here I’ve taken this long ass song and turned it into this:

(the next step just kind of depends on my mood, or ill do both, doesnt matter)

2-A. Subclips: if im making a shorter video or a video where i’m not 100% super familiar with the footage, i will immediately start making subclips using the episodes ive already pulled into the project. if it’s a ship/character that i’ve edited before, i’ll just go to Import->Media from Project and import the subclips i made previously. either way, subclips are there! 

2-B. Sheets: for ships that i know very well/have a lot of footage/im concerned about potentially repeating something, i will go to Google Sheets/Excel and take the lyrics im editing to and put them in column A, separating by pauses in the singing. then i put corresponding footage i think will go well in column B! im often not super specific because i know the beats are gonna be different than i remember, so i usually stick to referencing whole scenes instead of specifics moments. here’s an example:

3. Clip placement: Then I start placing clips down! Below is how I organize my timeline tho I know a lot of editors who put the music on top, this is just how I like it. I also keep a single muted audio layer in between for the video footage’s audio and then I’ll delete that layer when I’m done (or sometimes I don’t, it doesn’t really matter)

I think it’s good to hit the beats as much as possible, it makes for a more dynamic audio-visual experience! In general I try to make my videos so that, if I didn’t add any zooms or typography or coloring, it would still be a good amv. And don’t limit yourself to just one layer, you can have as many layers as you’d like and put clips on top of each other (cookie cutter/changing the layer to dodge or add or screen or whatever) is a good way to mix things up

when I zoom in you can see I’ve got some variety already in my transitions, I know I use that motion-blur-zoom a lot these days but I still try to mix it up and keep my brain invested

4. Typography: After all the clips have been placed (or most of the clips, ofc sometimes I’ll want to add more later) I move on to typography! I’m lazy so the first thing I’ll do it just put down unedited text where I think I’ll want it to go. It just helps me organize myself. Then I’ll pretty up the text afterwards.

Typography isn’t necessary for a good AMV, but really nice typography can really spruce things up. I’ve only very recently gotten confident in my text editing skills, and I just kept watching typography done by editors I really like until I figured out what they were doing. My recommendation is to just KEEP ADDING EFFECTS! Convolution kernel, gaussian blur, mask the text so it appears from angles that the transitions wouldn’t be able to do - of course there’s gotta be a limit for taste, but just add stuff until you like how it looks. Also changing the blending style of the text layer is good, dodge and difference are my go-tos for typography layers.

5. Transitions: I don’t go crazy with transitions, but it’s fun to mess around with them. You don’t want too many crazy/different transitions, you want them to match the mood of the song and the type of beat you’re hitting. I usually ensure that all similar beats in the song have the same transition type on them, bbbbbbut that’s cuz I’m overly obsessed with parallel structure. There’s plenty of fantastic AMVs where they just go ham and do whatever types of transitions they want to in each part of the song and they make it work just fine

(next step, once again, kind of depends on my mood lol)

6-A. Zooms: Time for zooms! I usually just use the pan/crop for zooming, but often I’ll incorporate Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves or NewBlue AutoPan, especially if I’m trying to zoom typography with the footage at the same rate. I try to keep my zooms short and slower, I mean obv it just depends on the song but yeah. There’s a lot of different ways to do zooms so I recommend experimenting and just playing around with different effects

6-B. Zooms...but different: Another way that I’ll do zooms which is definitely pretty different (but this is what I do for crossovers like 95% of the time because I am laaaaaaaaaaazy) is I’ll drag the project into a new project timeline and start editing it there. It’s similar to how After Effects works and it makes it easier to put effects overtop of multiple layers without having to pre-render anything.

So you can see I’ve just pulled in the .VEG file and popped it in the timeline! So this way I can add zooms and transitions without worrying about layers. And if I see a mistake I need to fix, I can just go back into the original .VEG file and edit it, and it’ll be edited when I come back here. So it’s much easier than pre-rendering or trying to do zooms on a lot of layers. To be clear tho, this doesn’t work well if you have a lot of fade transitions, it’s best for sharp transitions and it’s great when you’re using Sapphire FX BlurMoCurves a lot.

7. Overlays: After that I’ll add more typography (or if you didn’t add any earlier, you can add some here overtop of the new project file) that kind of goes on top of everything. And then I’ll add any overlays or objects or whatever else I wanna add! I’m not someone who uses a lot of backgrounds cuz I don’t have a background-creative-brain so I stick to simple overlays at the most.

8. Coloring!!! This is very sad but I only JUST learned a few weeks ago that you can add coloring/effects to your entire video with this button here, so in case anyone else hates watching tutorials as much as I do here’s where I’m talking about:

This shit would’ve made my life so much easier throughout the years lol But alas. Anyway so for coloring there are some effects that are popular for any colorings you’ll find on YT (but you can certainly just download some, Riverdale editors in particular share a lot of really great colorings but you’ll find them anywhere in the live action editing community):

Channel Blend, Color Curves, Color Blend, Color Balance, Convolution Kernel (best for live action footage or footage that isnt very crisp), Color Corrector Secondary

These are all just fun to mess with. Channel Blend in particular is something of a mystery for me, I haven’t studied it fully to understand what I’m doing so I mostly just mess with it randomly until I like what I see lol

9. Render time! First render, anyway. Usually there’ll be some random problem in the footage or something and I’ll have to either go back into the project and fix it OR if I’m feeling particularly sour (or maybe if I’ve rendered like 3-4 times already) I will just take the finished render and manually remove any errors, stretching out the good footage to cover my tracks. You’d be surprised how often I end up doing that lol

And then it’s good to post! I primarily render as .WMV but I also go for .MP4s every once in a while. If I want to upload it to Twitter I’ll do an .MP4 but it’s a new thing for me so I’m still stuck on .WMV mostly.

Anyway I hope this answered your question at least a little bit, I can go into more detail about certain parts of this if you’d like!

[yallarewild]

20 reasons why i think self dx is dangerous (as a nd/mentally ill person who’s spent a decade researching psych)

this was made purely to highlight the dangers of self diagnosis and the importance of necessary medical treatment

important disclaimers:

self dx =/= self advocacy, i.e. researching symptoms that you think you might have and trying to compare them to your own behavior without actually dxing yourself, regardless whether you are going to seek medical help. i believe this is extremely important: it can provide you w/a sense of validation to know you’re not alone, and it can put you in touch with your feelings a little more once you realize there actually may be something going on with you. 

this post is not made for the intention of judging the character of people who self dx- there are many other posts out there about the ableism factors,  the trivialization of mental illness, or the way tumblr communities handle mental illness, etc.

tl;dr: .it’s not a fucking joke, please go get checked out by a professional medical practitioner, or don’t (but pls do), but whatever you do please don’t self dx

i often see the phrase “no one knows you better than yourself” as a justification for self dx and while you’re the only one who has access to your emotions and thoughts, no one is objective about their health, thoughts, and emotions. it’s impossible to truly dx yourself with any mental disorder because you subconsciously bring different types of cognitive biases into the process – this is why “medical intern syndrome” is such a prevalent phenomenon. you might know your emotions and thoughts, but this fails to address the fact that your perception of your feelings are grossly affected by your true mental illness (which says something ab your mental illness in and of itself).

not having access to mental health care doesn’t mean you should dx yourself with a mental illness, its not black or white. i often see teenagers saying they don’t want to get a prof dx because they don’t want their parents involved and i totally understand that, ableism is so terrible and i’ve experienced it for so long, trust me. luckily, there are ways to access mental health care at little to no cost, insurance or not, without getting your parents involved, but im not here to judge those who struggle w/resources to care.

untreated mental illness does not go away & a pro dx is crucial for access to treatment, disability benefits or other types of care or services. this could literally mean life or death. the prognoses for untreated mental illnesses are across the board terrible and may have devastating effects on your life: the longer they’re left untreated because you decided to not seek treatment, the more disabling they’re going to become. like one argument for self dx is that not everyone can access mental health care/resources…so instead they do something that literally prevents them from accessing resources….. uhhhhhh ??

you could put yourself in grave danger because symptoms of mental disorders may actually be life threatening symptoms of serious physical issues requiring medical care: thyroid issues, liver damage, vitamin deficiencies, blood/bone/brain infections, neurological disorders, many types of cancer, autoimmune disorders, brain tumors, epilepsy, diabetes, etc

you could put yourself in grave danger because you may be dealing with early symptoms of a more serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, DID, etc. there are many early symptoms that mask other disorders. obv all mental illnesses are very serious but if you self dx with depression because you’re experiencing the “negative” symptoms of schizophrenia: lethargy, lack of affect, etc. you may not think a pro dx is necessary and early treatment is crucial for successful long term treatment of schizophrenia.

there is so much misinformation about what symptoms look & a psychiatrist is able to determine the degree and direction of the symptoms. there is a huge spectrum within each symptom and it honestly takes a trained medical professional to determine the severity. for ex: mood swings are common in both bipolar disorder & BPD but they look and feel totally different for each disorder. people justify this with: “well i fit the literal dsm diagnosis” except,,,, you probably dont. the dsm was NOT designed for people who are not medical professionals to interpret- there are nuances of specific symptoms that determine a dx

just because you experience several behaviors doesn’t necessarily mean you have a mental illness at all, diagnoses are based on the specific combination of symptoms. you may look at mood swings, anxiety and issues w/interpersonal relationships, and think you def have bpd; however it’s important to factor in that mood swings/anxiety are associated with hormones, eating patterns, stress, situational conditions etc but since you’re in the lens of looking for a diagnosis you might point to that and think it fits within that diagnostic criteria. im not saying you’re faking or don’t have a mental illness, im saying one or more of your symptoms may not be accounted for mental illness.

if you self dx and then don’t get treatment and/or medication you’re generally at a HIGH risk for self medication which may or may not include self-harm and substance abuse. since mental illnesses generally do not get better over time, so the longer you wait, the higher your chances of engaging in self destructive behaviors. there are some mental disorders that are literally inherent chemical imbalances that can really only be treated with medication, no matter how much self care you engage in.

i often see the argument that “psychiatrists just go down a checklist to diagnose you and that’s it!”, as well as, “My psychiatrist googled ‘x disorder quiz’ and printed the first one that came up!! i was in and out in five minutes!!!” as justifications for self dx: like either your psychiatrist needs to get their fucking license revoked or that’s just not true. the testing process generally takes an hour and involves diff types of observations of behavior as well as a very long list of questions- it’s not a fucking list printed from the internet from a random site.

additionally i see, “psychiatrists make mistakes too!!” right, true but the chances of a psychiatrist making a mistake vs the chances of you making a mistake are very slim in relation to each other due to the reasons listed here, i.e. decades of research on a phd level

just because some people go to the psychiatrist post-self dx and learn they were correct about their self dx doesnt mean that it applies to everyone and REGARDLESS it doesnt mean you shouldnt get professionally diagnosed anyway. these are a few experiences out of a million. it literally doesn’t mean that you are definitely right in yours.

quizzes taken on the internet aren’t fucking diagnosis (and neither is 6 months of research)??? like i don’t care if you’ve taken ten of them. if they’re designed with the proper controls they could def help SCREEN for mental illness symptoms, but even then it requires a lot of second party consulting, it’s something you’re literally not qualified for, for the reasons listed above.. if i took diff quizzes or tried to research my symptoms i could def try and self dx with so many diff disorders that aren’t even comorbid. they need to be interpreted by a medical professional and are usually designed to help guide ppl towards treatment

“all psychiatrists are neurotypical and dont understand my mental illness!” how do you know they’re neurotypical? they wouldn’t tell you even if they were??? also what does being neurotypical have to do with their ability to correctly do their job???? would you expect an oncologist to have gone through cancer in order to do their job?

the concept of self fulfilling prophesy is hard at work with self diagnosis; if you attach a label of depression to yourself it’s going to influence your behavior and self perception whether or not you’re aware of it. you might end up seriously damaging yourself because youre trying to fit the diagnosis. when i obsessively tell myself i feel very depressed, after awhile i actually prevent myself from feeling better because i keep telling myself i’m depressed, for example.

one phrase i see a lot: “well people self dx with a cold, why is this any different?” well, for one thing, the physical ramifications of a cold and a chronic mental illness ie a literal chemical imbalance in your brain are miles apart. they’re not even medically comparable in terms of immediate and long-term effects. additionally, it really highlights the fact that many people treat mental illness as a personalized experience whereas they treat their physical health w/objective opinions from medical professionals. this analogy is not only inaccurate but it’s dangerous as fuck.

people might not be aware symptoms they’re experiencing are abnormal because that’s their normal state based on their actual mental illnesses. for ex someone who suffers from an anxiety dx might just be used to adapting to it their whole life when they actually have a serious disorder and not even think about getting help for it. your baseline cannot be assessed objectively.

sometimes the self dx community is enabling in a bad way- the lack of treatment for disorders real or otherwise make them more susceptible to encouraging/justIfying unhealthy coping habits. its kind of like the blind leading the blind. like it’s just not a good idea.

just because it might take a couple diff psychiatrists to get an accurate diagnosis isnt a good justification for self dx. this can be due to a million different reasons- maybe you were diff ages when you saw each one, maybe you were exhibiting signs of something else at the time- i was originally diagnosed with depression before bipolar disorder because my mental health hadn’t stabilized so my mania wasn’t present.

using the excuse of “ask someone close to you what they think about you possibly having [x] dx” as a legitimate step towards self diagnosis is as bad as saying you don’t have a personal bias… like the answer from your friend/family member is based on so many factors: the nature of the relationship, how honest the person is, their emotional state at the time, their own ability to analyze the people around them, how aware of psychological symptoms they are, their bias towards mental illness, the way the symptom description is presented,   the setting the discussion took place, etc etc

last but not least, i see the phrase: “well mental illness didn’t suddenly appear as soon as i got a diagnosis!” obviously it was always there but you may have mislabeled it before your diagnosis if you self dx’d first, thats it. no one is pretending mental illnesses suddenly appear when a professional diagnosis is assigned

your best “research” on the internet is not equal to ten years of medical school, its just not, and it’s concerning to me that self diagnosis is such a prevalent trend on here. please seek treatment, even if it’s in the form of your high school or college counseling center; the links i’ve provided in number 3 may be helpful in locating mental health care, whether it’s a community mental health care center, or a therapist close to you who offers reduced cost treatment.

you owe it to yourself, it’s 10000% worth it.

[aquarianlights]

Coming out as transgender to people who you have absolutely no idea if they're going to reject you or not is worse and way more traumatic than coming out to people who you KNOW are going to reject you.

I'm literally fucking sobbing right now. Two of my oldest friends... Two people I have known since pre-k...maybe before that...Jymboree... That. That was before pre-k, right? Well, I've known them since Jymboree.........and I don't think either of them know I am transgender. One of them only just now found me on FB and we haven't spoken since... early college years. And the other...we haven't spoken in a few years.

I'm just coming out to them both RIGHT NOW....and I'm shaking and crying. I'm literally shaking and there are tears rolling down my cheeks.... I have known these two girls probably 24 of my 25 years of existence. Maybe almost a full 25. They were two of the biggest influences in my entire life....and they are like sisters who I grew up with.

I only found out I was transgender and not just "faking it/pretending to be a boy" around the age of 20-22ish. I honest to god thought I was pretending and my ex girlfriend breaking up with me after over 5 years of an LD relationship because she thought I was pretending, too, was possibly one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. Not THAT it happened...but how it happened. And the things I have experienced from being transgender... specifically from cishet males... is horrible.

And people misgendering me and just not understanding for some reason??? I'm sorry, but even if you're on the autism spectrum, you can understand when someone says they're a boy, they're a boy. You're not misunderstanding this because you're autistic; you're misunderstanding it because you're a white, cishet dude who apparently has a crush on me.

Receiving a text that says or someone saying "I'm sorry, but it's just weird for a me, being a straifght guy, to have a crush on you as a transboy." LET ME MAKE ONE THING CLEAR RIGHT FUCKING NOW: YOU EITHER HAVE A CRUSH ON ME OR YOU ARE NOT STRAIGHT. There is ///////////NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/////// inbetween. You cannot be male and like another male and call yourself straight. Can you? Then how can you like me and call yourself straight? I'm just as male as you are. Always have been, always will be. Before and after HRT + gender correction surgeries. Just because I am transgender and haven't transitioned yet does not make me ANY LESS of a man than you in ANY way.

There is literally no way in this world or logic or ANYTHING that can state factually that you can be straight and male and have a crush on me. I don't understand how a man can call himself straight if he has a crush on another man? Can someone explain that to me? Please? I'm just DYING to know. And for anyone who is autistic (I think I have like maybe 2 or 3 friends on the spectrum here on FB and who knows how many on tumblr where I'm gonna c/p this to), you have absolutely no excuse. If a fucking child can understand that I'm a man....so can you. Idk if autism and down syndrome are synonymous... I don't think they are, coz my cousin has down syndrome and he's not like any of the autistic people I've spoken with online... (So I'm a little confused there), BUT EVEN HE UNDERSTANDS I AM MALE OKAY! He can't even speak for himself or change himself or dress himself or do anything for himself. He holds a bagging position at a local grocery store with help. Other than that, that's about it. He is in his late 20's and he acts like a child...always pulling my hair, can't speak correctly, speaks through sounds and groans and motions, reacts emotionally like...toddler-like emotions...Stuff like that to give examples. And I thought, for the longest time (coz I was ignorant and sheltered) that that was what autism was.

Well, I'm sorry, but if my cousin WITH THAT SEVERITY OF DOWN SYNDROME (which may or may not be autism?????? I have no clue on any developmental issues coz I only have mental disorders and not developmental issues and I only study psuedo-sciences (aka psych things) relevant to myself because I'm forced to so I'm ignorant by choice here which is probably abelist but it emotionally hurts me to look at this stuff) CAN UNDERSTAND THAT I'M A BOY EVEN WHEN I'M IN A DRESS AND HIGH HEELS WITH MAKE-UP ON, UNDERCOVER IN DISGUISE FOR A FAMILY FUNCTION.... ANY OF YOU AUTISTIC PEOPLE CAN. NONE OF YOU HAVE ANY EXCUSE. NO ONE WITH A DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDER, MENTAL ILLNESS, OR ANYTHING HAS ANY EXCUSE. AND, NO, I'M SORRY, BUT YOUR BIGOTRY IS THE SAME AS PEDOPHILIA BEING INCLUDED IN THE LGBT+ COMMUNITY: IT'S NOT COUNTING AND IT NEVER WILL BE, YOU SICK FUCK.

I'm just....I'm just so scared and so angry and so hurt and so...

All the experiences I've had irl and online with both people I know and people I don't know and anything inbetween...professionals and acquaintances and anything inbetween... I'm fucking traumatized by it all and yes that's actually part of my PTSD. It's not the main part of it, but the trauma associated with accumulated experiences due to being out and proud as a transman are a part of my extremely severe PTSD. Again, not the main part...but the fact they are a chunk is scary... Coz that means it could be the ENTIRE reason for someone's PTSD if they were to have lesser experiences than me (lesser being used in quantitative terms here, not qualitative---everyone's traumas are equal...the times we experience traumas are all different, obvs, and the times we experience traumas that contribute to PTSD are different and since I have so goddamn many, thinking some trans person could have PTSD based SOLELY around their experience as a trans person is horrifying when that is one of the least of my worries in the PTSD category).

I didn't realizing coming out could be this terrifying...

When I thought I was pretending to be male and was actually female irl, I thought I was just a lesbian since I am attracted to mostly girls. (Didn't know bi and pan was a thing either lol) so I came out on my very first day at a new school sophomore year of hs by people asking me or something and me doing something really bold and rash to prove it and then shrugging and being all "And? What are you gonna do about it?" Like. Coming out as lezz was as though I were coming out as human in my mind. It absolutely did not matter to me at all. 

And, frankly, I got off on it mentally coz it added a shock value when someone called me a dyke in a crowd and I would grab the nearest girl and ask her permission to kiss her and kiss her as hard as I could and then throw her aside (gently) into the crowd and strut right up to said (cishet white male obvs) person who asked and stand so close he could smell the shampoo I use and look him directly in the eye and dare him to do something about it and basically say "Are you just angry I get more pussy than you? Is that why you tried to make it public that you've got such a small dick?" Stuff like that. I get filmed a lot doing this stuff so there's prob videos of little female-presenting, bright blue haired, 5'1 3'4" kandi kid, harajuku girl Nickita version of me floating around being all confrontational and angry. Lol.

I forget why I made this post.

Oh yeah. Because I'm crying and shaking coz my friends aren't gonna respond for a while I'm sure and Idk if I'm going to lose them and at the same time I am super super SUPER sick and drained by guys not treating me as equal to them when I'm just as male as they are, with or without the parts.

I’m seriously so drained by cishet boys. By the ace thing and by the trans thing. I’m sick of cishet boys trying to coerce me into sex because they’re the “one exception” and I’m sick of cishet boys trying to say they’re straight but they have a crush on me, when I’m a boy. You CANNOT BE A STRAIGHT BOY AND HAVE A CRUSH ON A BOY!?!??!?!

These are things I deal with MULTIPLE times a day from MULTIPLE people...from people with autism and aspergers...to actual full on neurotypicals. Like. THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?

NOTE: I have since learned the aspergers, autism, and down syndrome are like...all different or something like that. I don’t really want to know, which is ableist af, but I don’t want to know on purpose. I want to stay ignorant on specifics. I just want the general knowledge and the tl;dr version of it all. At least....right now....maybe when I’m not about to have a panic attack, ready to slit my wrists, overdose, shoot someone, can slow down my thoughts, can force my intrusive thoughts back into intrusive thought zone and not desire zone, and can STOP HAVING AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS WHEN I KNOW DAMN WELL MY SCHIZO MEDS ARE WORKING THEY ARE WORKING THEY ARE WORKING SO THIS ISN’T REAL AND IDK WHY THIS IS HAPPENING....maybe then I’ll like to know specifics, but I cannot an will not handle specifics right now. No thanks. Pseudo-science are ew. It’s bad enough I have to lean my OWN psuedo-sciences. (Psst. I still only learn the tl;dr textbook version of my own pseudo-science stuff (aka: psych stuff) so I can just learn the rest from self experience. it works. pro tip, y’all.)

[lawlliets]

personal post / dont feel the need to read or reply im just venting abt myself and my life and my head and its super super SUPER SUPER long and i have nowhere else to vent besides this website and if youre wondering its just me venting about my anxiety and my life and myself, nothing else