#pause is tumblr cropping any better

[captainyaps]

Instagram cropping is killing me, so tumblr gets the Hermes doodles first

[mvltisstuff]

hi!! i use tumblr on safari - so i’m unable to answer any messages - but i would like to put in a request for conrad fisher x fem! reader smut!

if your comfortable, could you do a imagine with an innocent/virgin reader that is constantly flustered by conrad?

thank you so much!! <<33

champagne & sunshine - c.f**

summary: request

conrad fisher x reader

a/n: i get so nervous posting smut (for literally no reason😭), but i still hope you enjoy this 🩶 warning for smut.

the bonfires were always a good time, usually. once you grow up, the hype of them dies down a bit. belly begged y/n to come, being her older sister figure. it was y/n’s birthday, so belly convinced her that it would be fun. besides, y/n’s mom had been letting her drink today, as long as she was home and with close people. y/n figured she’d leave it at that, not bothering to take anything at the party.

she threw one of the cans in the bag at the corner of the beach, avoiding the full boxes of hard seltzer as her eye landed on conrad and jeremiah entering the beach. luckily, the fire wasn’t bright enough to illuminate her bright red cheeks. she walked away from the drinks, turning away from conrad but also trying to make herself seem noticeable.

she’d grown up with the conklins and fishers next door, but she always had the biggest crush on conrad. every single time he walked in, her heart raced and almost everyone knew it. belly always teased her, someone noticing before she even knew she liked him.

conrad had always had his eyes on y/n. conrad, y/n, and steven had been the oldest, so it was usually him and her together. she acted like she barely knew him, when he probably knew her better than anyone else. now that they were both eighteen, legal adults, they could do pretty much whatever they pleased. somehow, y/n still found herself blushing like a little girl. conrad was one of the first to show her any attention. boys never cared about her at home, and he always made her feel wanted. she was always a shadow to her friends, who had guys clinging to them. she sat around with other people talking about sex and other stuff that y/n pretended to know about. it made her a little bit embarrassed, but who really cares? her whole friend group would laugh at her humorously if they found out she was a virgin, but again, who cares, right?

it wasn’t until she was sitting on the warm sand, feeling it in her hands as she slid them across the floor, that conrad sat next to her on the beach. the music was blaring, so y/n brought herself away to just observe people for a little bit. someone must’ve had the same idea if they tread all the way over to sit with her.

“you got dragged here, too?” conrad asks first.

“belly, jeremiah for you, i assume?”

“the one and only,” conrad laughs, as he kicks away an empty bottle. “you’re not drinking anything?”

“nah, i don’t really feel like it tonight. i’d rather just enjoy my birthday sober, unlike everyone else,” she tells him, pointing to the stumbling people surrounding the fire.

“you’re not the only one,” conrad says. “so it’s just us, huh?”

“y-yeah,” y/n stutters. “i mean, i didn’t even bother getting all dressed up for this shit.”

“i think you look beautiful either way,” he says, and when y/n looks up, his eyes are softly on hers, refusing to crack the shell between them. y/n pauses, looking at conrad dumbfounded. she never has boys call her beautiful, let alone the one she’s been hopelessly in love with for years. but, they always say love hits you when you least expect it. y/n thought that was a lie, but she really believed it for now.

“you too, connie,” she spits out, not bothering to change the adjective for him because everyone is beautiful. he adjusts himself to sit closer to y/n, trying to relieve some of the tension. his eyes can’t help but wander across her body, taking in every part of her that’s breathtaking to him. and the cropped tank top and shorts that she’s wearing isn’t fucking helping his case either. she’d be lying if she wasn’t checking him out, too. his sharp jawline, his hands, his radiant eyes, his lips could never be missed by y/n. someone this pretty deserves to be looked at, they both think without speaking.

“do you wanna head out? come to my place for a bit?” conrad asks, standing up and holding his hand out as she nods up at him, anticipating a night alone.

before y/n can even begin to think straight, their lips are crashed together in his car. she’s leaning over the cup holders in the center, and her hands are against his face. his hands are placed on her hips as he can’t help but steer his mind away from his tongue in her mouth. he never in a million years thought he’d see this side of her, and she never thought she’d see it in herself. she’s kissed guys before, but never this intimately. conrad pulls away, smiling against her lips before connecting them again. every single time this happens, y/n swears her heart skips a beat in the best way possible. like their lips set off fireworks in the car. they decided to leave the vehicle, climbing up the stairs, trying not to disturb the moms watching a movie. conrad places his hands on her thighs, lifting her up and placing y/n gently on his bed. he climbs up as well, letting her legs wrap around him as their kiss does nothing but intensify.

her hands roam all around his body, his waist, his shoulders, his neck. the only time they separate is for a breath of air, just until they can return again. conrad’s wander over her chest, placing one of his hands to squeeze her breasts.

“is this ok?” conrad waits for confirmation until he gets a yes. after, in response, y/n tugs off conrad’s shirt, discarding it to the floor somewhere in his room. her hands run down his back. “if you want to stop, tell me and we’ll stop the second you say it.”

“ok,” she peeps out. “but if this does go any further, i’ve never done any of… this, before.”

“we can stop, y/n, whenever you want.”

“no! no, i want to keep going. can we just, go slower, maybe?”

“anything you need,” conrad reassures her before moving down the waistband of her shorts. “can i take these off?”

“yes,” she tells him, clearly and assertively as he takes off the tank top, too, leaving her in just a gray bra on his bed.

“have you ever… ever been eaten out before?” he asks. she shakes her head no, slightly embarrassed so she puts her head down to cover it, but conrad sees right through it. “hey, look at me. you’re ok, i promise. can i keep going?”

“yeah, please,” she says, squirming in discomfort from her own arousal. the feeling is unfamiliar, wanting someone to touch her so bad as it’s at her fingertips. someone willing to love her is right in front of her. conrad begins to peel off y/n’s underwear, throwing it off the bed like his shirt, ending up somewhere on the floor. she pulls her legs apart, spreading them as conrad’s eyes fall deeper.

“god, y/n,” he says. “you’re so fucking hot.”

“conrad,” she begs, as he flattens himself down trying to ignore his own erection. he wants to pleasure her first, and knowing he’s the first one too might boost his ego a bit. but conrad would never admit that.

his face is an inch away from her pussy, beginning to kiss her inner thighs as she groans from the teasing. finally, his tongue makes contact with y/n’s slit, gathering up her arousal before swirling it around her clit. y/n’s head falls back onto the pillow again in pure pleasure, letting out a quiet moan for the first time. “oh, fuck yes,” she speaks out, making conrad try to contain a smile. he places his tongue on her clit again, moving his flat tongue up and down. he switches between those movements and wrapping his lips around it, sucking on her clit, causing her to fail at concealing her moans. y/n’s hand moves down to conrad’s hair, trying to ground herself on the bed from the ecstasy.

the second her climax starts rolling up onto her, her legs start shaking and that tells conrad that you’re close. “f-fuck, con- oh my god,” she pants out, trying to formulate words but failing. her orgasm creeps up and sends her over the edge, releasing a strong moan from her lips as she comes down from the high, his fingers are gently circling over her clit.

“that was, um, holy shit, that was amazing, conrad,” she smiles as he pulls himself back up to her.

“are you feeling alright?”

“better than ever,” she says, making conrad laugh as he moves over to his drawer. he pulls out the box of condoms before taking one out.

“do you wanna keep going?”

“yeah, i do.”

conrad moves back over, dropping his pants and rolling to condom on. y/n gazes at his length, wondering how she would be able to take it. with conrad here, she knew she would be ok, so they continued. he walks back over, pulling her legs apart and making eye contact with her again. “remember, we can always stop no matter what, ok? just say stop, and we can stop.” she nods and he leans in closer. he plants a sweet kiss on her lips before pulling away, it was her turn to smile against his lips.

once settled in between her legs, conrad begins to run his tip up her slit. he confirms that she’s doing alright and that she’s ready to keep going. after he’s aware, he slides his dick into her, making her nose scrunch and release a high moan.

“you ok?”

“yes,” she replies. “yeah, you can go faster.”

conrad speeds up his pace, thrusting himself into y/n. she didn’t feel outright pain, just discomfort. that discomfort soon turned into pleasure, causing her mouth to hang open. “you feel so good, y/n/n, god damn.”

y/n’s hand falls down to her clit, circling it until she starts to bring that now familiar feeling up. conrad continues to keep the same pace, not changing it to make her feel comfortable and in control, just as much as he is. “i’ve loved you for so fucking long,” he spits out, not thinking about his words. y/n heard him loud and clear, but she’s too distracted by her orgasm coming up.

“conrad i’m close,” she tells him.

“me too, baby,” he says, breathless. “come for me, y/n.”

her release leaves her with stars in her head, the feeling better than anything she’s ever experienced. she was always worrying about sex and what it might be like, but with conrad, he made it amazing for her. she knew he was the right guy. he brings himself down, leaning onto her as he releases himself into the condom. he pulls out of her, throwing away the condom and pulling his boxers back on. y/n grabs her underwear, as she stands up wobbly. her legs are weak from her two orgasms from conrad, making him chuckle in the corner.

“hey, um,” y/n starts. “thank you.”

“yeah, of course,” he stutters a bit, not sure of what to say but trying to still wrap his head around it. he means, he just had sex with the hottest girl in cousins, what is he supposed to say? “you know, i meant what i said. i’ve liked you so much, for a long time.”

she just stares at him, confirming that she’s not in some dream. “i’ve been in love with you since the day i first saw you on the beach,” conrad steps over to her. placing his hands back on her bare waist and kissing her passionately again. he pulls back again to sadly, break the kiss off.

“we should probably clean up a bit, before everyone comes back and yells at us for leaving,” he says, brushing a loose piece of hair behind her ear. she nods, beginning to pull the rest of her clothes on. thank god she left that party when she did, or she would still love conrad, but never say it.

[dqmeron]

some quick info: ↳ this is specifically for the screencapping method. i use mplayer osx extended to get my caps, but there are a few other programs you can use as well. i’ll specifically be going over mplayer here. ↳ i’m using ps 24.4.1 on a 2020 m1 macbook air

[tysm to @kyubinz for looking this over and adding some things ily]

☆ feel free to send me an ask/message with any questions you have! ☆

「 setup 」

1. finding videos

one big thing to remember is that the overall file size of your video will impact the quality of your gif. the larger, the better. i almost never use anything below 1080p, and try to use 2160p whenever i can. 4k video downloader is the program i use for downloading videos from youtube, it’s free to install and works great! because of how large some files can be, i always store any media on my hard drive. i highly recommend using one if you plan to keep lots of files on hand. 

.mkv files are best, but .mp4 works fine as well (.mkv files are usually bigger aka better quality).

2. getting your screencaps

after downloading mplayer, go to the top bar and click file > open. open the video you’ll be screencapping. 

you can either drag the little time indicator or using the arrow keys on your keyboard to move to the spot you want to capture. the > key can also be used to move forward frame by frame. to start capping, pause the video and press shift + cmnd (ctrl if you’re on windows) + s to take a screencap. i usually just hold it down until i’ve gotten all the screencaps i need. 

by default, screencaps go right to desktop. you can set up a folder for them to go to automatically by going to settings > general and then selecting a spot in the menu under “interface”, but i just let them go to desktop and then sort them into individual folders so they’re easier for me to find while i’m giffing. in general, i try to stay under 80 frames so my gifs fit into tumblr’s 10mb image size limit. 

3. importing screencaps into photoshop

to import your caps into ps, go to file > scripts > load files into stack. this window should open:

click browse, and navigate to the folder with your caps in it. select all of the caps you want to import, and then click open.

click ok to create a file with your caps, and then wait until it’s finished loading your caps into the layers tab. once they’re loaded in, this is what your screen should look like:

(if you aren’t seeing the timeline at the bottom of your screen, go up to the top bar and go to window > timeline)

click create frame animation, then go to the hamburger menu at the top right of the timeline and select make frames from layers. once your frames have loaded in, select the same menu again and click reverse frames. play through your gif to make sure everything looks good. 

if you were to save your gif at the speed it’s set at now, it would be way too fast. to fix this, you have to set the frame delay. do this by selecting all your frames in the timeline using shift click, and then clicking (on any frame) where it says “0 sec”. select other from the menu that comes up, and you should get this popup:

the general rule of thumb for gif frame delay is 0.05 seconds. there are some cases — certain animated movies or video games, for example — where other delays are best, but for the most part, 0.05 is what you want to use (0.05 can slightly slow gifs, and sometimes using 0.04 better matches the clip's original timing. this is really a "train your eyes" thing, and picking the best delay gets easier as you gif for longer). you can set this by typing the number into the text box and then hitting the ok button or enter on your keyboard. 

at this point, i’d go ahead and save your file. you can go to file > save in the top bar, or just hit cmd/ctrl + s on your keyboard.

「 making your gif 」

1. sizing

after your frames are ready, the next thing is to size your gif. to crop your gif, press c on your keyboard to open the cropping tool. white borders will show up around your gif.

before doing anything, i would suggest making sure “delete cropped pixels” is unchecked. this will allow you to drag your gif around later if you want to reposition. you can find this option at the top of your screen. drag the borders on either side until you have the area you want selected. mine looks like this:

once you’re happy with your selection, hit enter on your keyboard to finalize it. 

the tumblr image guidelines require gifs to be 540px across (here’s a post detailing this). to change your gif’s image size, go to image > image size in the top bar. you’ll get this popup:

instead of setting the width right to 540, i’ll be setting it to 544, and then trimming down the edges using canvas size. this makes the quality just a little better, and also prevents any weird borders being made around your gif on the off chance photoshop decides to add them. this isn’t necessary at all, you can absolutely size right to 540, but i just like doing this. if you choose to do this, open canvas size right after you set image size (image > canvas size in the top bar), and trim your width down to 540 and your height down a few pixels as well. 

2. sharpening & other filters

sharpening is essential for good-quality gifs. the first step to this is converting our timeline from frame animation to a video timeline. select this little icon in the bottom left of your screen:

this is what your timeline will look like now:

you can use the little slider with mountains on either side to change the width of your frames in the timeline for easier access when editing. now that we’ve got all this set up, we can sharpen! i use this action pack to sharpen my gifs in addition to a few of my own settings (here is a video on how to install actions into photoshop). go to window > action in the top bar if you aren’t seeing the action tab. 

i’ll be using the sharper action from the pack. to use an action, select it from the list and press the little play button at the bottom of the panel to apply it.

in addition to this, i usually also add unsharp mask at 50% amount with a 0.5px radius:

there are a few other filters than can be helpful when giffing:

a. add/reduce noise noise (aka grain) can be added with “add noise”. go to filter > noise > add noise.

these are the settings i usually use, but the amount depends on the gif (i don't ever go over 3.5 for the most part):

(if you want a grain effect but moving noise doesn't work for the gif, you can also add a grain overlay and then mess with blending mode and layer opacity until it looks how you want)

reduce noise can be used to remove some of the pre-existing grain on a clip. go to filter > noise > reduce noise. here are my settings:

leaving reduce noise on its own at 100% is a bit too much, so double click this icon and change the opacity (i usually do around 45):

b. gaussian blur if your clip is a bit pixelated, gaussian blur can help with smoothing it out a bit. go to filter > blur > gaussian blur. my settings are 1 pixel radius w ~20% opacity (this changes based on the gif).

3. coloring

time to color! i want you to keep in mind during this section that everyone likes different colorings, and this is just my process! please don’t feel pressured to follow exactly what i’m doing, the best way to find what you like is to just mess around and experiment!

i like to start off with lighting adjustments: brightness/contrast, levels, exposure, and curves. 

a. brightness/contrast i usually start out with this first, just because brightening the gif right away helps me start thinking about how i want to color! here are my settings:

b. levels/curves levels and curves can either be used interchangeably or together. i usually use levels to adjust lighting and curves to adjust color values, but i’ll go over using both for lighting as well as using curves for adjusting color values. 

for both of these adjustments, i use the eyedropper tools to pick out white and black points. for levels, the top eyedropper tool to the left of the graph is used to pick out a black point. i do this first. use the tool to pick a spot on your gif that you want to be the base for black values. for me, that’s the shadow inside rey’s hood. the bottom eyedropper tool picks white point. use the tool to pick a spot on your gif that you want to be the base for white values. i chose the outside of rey’s hood. make sure you’re doing this on a new levels adjustment layer.

now, on to curves. you can either use the same eyedropper method or manipulate the graph directly. using the eyedropper is the same as levels, so i’ll just go over graph manipulation. 

shade lightens as you move to the right along the x-axis of the graph — black is the far left, white is the far right, middle is the midtones. generally, i don’t work with midtones.

i’m going to use levels for this gif’s lighting, and curves to adjust color values. here’s how to do that:

curves can be used to adjust the amount of a certain color in different lighting areas of a gif. for example, i can specifically decrease the amount of green in the gif’s whites. to edit these values, select the rgb drop-down menu and adjust them one at a time. here are my final graphs:

c. exposure this one’s pretty straightforward. the exposure slider adjust general exposure. the offset slider adjusts how dark your dark points are, and gamma correction can be used to lighten/darken scenes as a whole. here’s my settings:

d. color balance color balance is used to adjust overall tint of a clip. this is in general pretty simple, but i do want to point out that using the shadow and highlights tabs in addition to just the midtones can really help. here’s my settings:

e. channel mixer channel mixer is one of my favorite tools in ps, especially for coloring scenes that are a pain in the ass without it. to avoid taking up too much space, here’s a great tutorial covering channel mixer. here’s my settings:

[at this point, i’m noticing my gif is still a bit darker than i’d like it, so i’m adding just a bit of brightness/contrast to fix it. there’s also a patch of blue over one of rey’s eyes, so i’ve used a hue/saturation layer to get rid of that bit and masked it to her eye. i’m not going to go over masking here, but there are lots of great tutorials out there!]

f. selective color selective color can be used to adjust the amount of specific colors within a color. for example, if i were to go into the red tab and take out cyans, the reds would become more red. if i were to add yellows, the reds would become more orange, etc etc. this can be especially good for color manipulation. for this gif, i’d like to make the background more blue, so i’m going to use selective color to do this. here’s my settings:

g. color lookup color lookup uses 3dlut files to remap gif colors (it’s a preset — think instagram filter or something similar). i don’t always use these, but when i do, i almost never leave them at 100% opacity. color lookup is great for giving gifs a film-type look if you want to do that, it’s got loads of different options. here’s my settings (adjustment layer is set to 20% opacity):

atp i’m pretty much done with coloring! i usually end up doing a few extra little lighting adjustments at the end. for this gif, i added some brightness/contrast at +8. i’ve also noticed that my gif’s looking a bit grainy, so i’ve added some noise to lean into it. this is usually the way i fix it, but you can definitely do reduce noise/gaussian blur as well if you don’t want a grainy look. 

here’s my fully colored gif + a process gif (fast images warning):

「 saving gifs 」

1. frame rate

one thing you may have noticed is that my gif is looking a bit choppy. photoshop has a tendency to mess with frame delay after gifs are converted to video timeline. here’s how to fix that.

select all of your layers and convert them to a smart object (right click > convert to smart object). next, click on the hamburger menu in the top right of the timeline and go to convert frames > flatten frames into clips. now we need to change the timeline from video timeline to frame animation. click the little 3 boxes symbol in the bottom left corner of the timeline:

go to the hamburger menu again and select make frames (this is the same one you used earlier), then go through your frames and delete any duplicates. the first frame usually needs to be deleted specifically. once you’ve done that, set the frame delay back to 0.05 the way you did earlier. 

2. exporting

once you’re happy with how your gif looks, go to file > export > save for web (legacy). 

these are my export settings, but feel free to experiment with the menus where i have selective and diffusion selected, different settings work best for each gif. in general, most gifmakers only use selective/adaptive and diffusion/pattern because they generally work the best for tumblr. before saving, make sure your looping option is set to forever:

gif size for tumblr has a 10mb limit. my gif is under this, so i don’t need to make any changes, but if yours is over, you can either delete some frames from the beginning/end of your gif and/or adjust the height of the gif (width needs to stay 540px so your gif doesn’t get stretched/compressed on tumblr, but height is fair game). 

here's my final gif!

happy giffing, and please don’t hesitate to send me any questions you have! ♡

[feralforfeydrautha]

Nameless Feyd Fic Teaser

Feyd awakened something in me, and I've been puzzling over how to write it. I have to get this out of my head, but trying to add plot keeps getting in the way. It won't be the best written fic you've ever read, but we're all just trying to stay fed out here. Also I know basically nothing about tumblr, so help a girl out with the formatting, tags, etc.

Adults only! 18+, minors don't interact.

Your cardinal rule was not to mix business and sex. The way he held your gaze, waiting to strike and devour you at any moment, you might be convinced to make an exception. 

You gently press the cloth at the hollow above your collarbone, letting two small rivulets of water trace down below the collar of your stillsuit. If you had your way, you would linger to enjoy the light breeze in the courtyard whispering across your dewy skin. Palace tradition dictates that you treat the luxury as trivial. Three quick dabs across your face, a quick press of moisture on your lips before dropping the cloth on the ground for the beggars to wring water from. Picking up your cases, you follow a servant inside. 

As you walked further and further down the halls, schlepping your cases, you thought this Harkonnen had better make a considerable purchase to warrant having called you here from Carthag. Perhaps some price adjustments are in order to make it worth the trouble. Originally, you had half a mind to refuse the request entirely, but had thought better of starting off on his bad side. Though Feyd-Rautha was reputed to be more cunning than his brother, but you didn’t suppose he would be any less vicious. Better to make the trip to Arrakeen than deal with the potential consequences of refusal. 

Finally, the servant stops in front of a set of doors. She meekly stands to the side, unmoving, gazing at the floor. 

“Do you mind?” you ask, gesturing towards the door handle with one of your cases. She shrinks further back against the wall. Sighing, you set down the case and knock on the door. You pull back your shoulders and lift your chin, ready to get this over with.

The door pulls open, but you cannot see who opens it. To your surprise, it is not a meeting hall, but a bedroom. No wonder it took so long to get here from the entrance. A tall, formidable frame rises from an armchair and slinks towards you. 

“You must be the Temptress,” he softly growls, the hairs at the nape of your neck seem to vibrate. “What have you brought for me?” 

“I’ll be glad to show you, na-baron, if there is somewhere I may set my cases. This is a rather… unconventional place for a meeting.” You pause, raising an eyebrow. There are no tables in the room, save a small end table next to the chair. 

“I thought you would prefer the unconventional,” he smirks, waiting for you to respond. You remain still. 

“The bed will suffice.”

As you lean to unlock the cases, you can feel him approach you from behind. He leans over your right shoulder, close enough for you to feel the heat radiating from his body. He reaches in front of you to retrieve an item from the case in front of your left hip, without making contact. You hate it when clients try to put their hands on you. Though he hasn’t touched you, the proximity has drawn your ire. You glance down at his hand, holding a flogger with metal tips.

“That one is quite a stinger. If you like a sharp, biting feel, I also have a selection of crops in the other case.” Feyd curves around you as you step to the side and click open the latch. With both hands, you pull out a handle with a long, thin reed. Feyd shakes his head. He presses a finger down along the cane, guiding you to put it back. 

“No? Alright. Tell me what you like, then.” You follow his gaze as he scans the toys, not lingering on any particular item. He runs a finger over clamps, harnesses, handles, then steps in between you and the bed, so you have to lift your head to look at him. His leg brushes your inner thigh.

“Is this it?” he asks. “With everything I’d heard about you, I thought surely you would have something I hadn’t tried before.”

 You grit your teeth, trying to tamp down on your irritation. You close one case lid, barely avoiding slamming it closed. 

“How was I to know what you have and haven’t tried before? I can’t carry my whole store here. If you want variety, you have to come to the shop. What a waste of time,” you huff.

You close the second case, and as you start to pull the handle, Feyd presses the case down into the bed. You snap your head to look at him. He’s grinning, mouth slightly agape. 

You yank the case out from under his hand and charge towards the door. He could have held his place, instead he lets your arm to his chest push him out of your path.

“Firey little pet” he calls out, but you round the corner without looking back. 

“Now, that’s something new.”

[gamesception]

Let’s read utena chapter 7

Tumblr’s new post editor just ate this entire reaction post I’m so mad it’s all gone.  I’ve turned back on ‘legacy editor’, but honestly every single pop-up overlay editor has been a nightmare and I wish they would go back to having a separate page for post creation, it’s the only way this site has ever been stable.

I’m soooo maddddd

anyway, last time we left off in the middle of the first Sionji duel.  I said something here, but it’s gone now so whatever, not much change from the anime so far anyway.

Except Touga’s physically here for some reason, and looks surprised, like he doesn’t know what’s going on, instead of watching smugly from afar larping like he’s in any amount of control here.

So anyway, the duel ends more or less like in the anime, only instead of the magic sword disappearing there’s this ridiculous sequence where it’s knocked flies out of Sionji’s hand and...

And into utena’s hand and visibly fills her with the power of Dios and everybody including Anthy is completely shocked so this is not normally what happens when a challenger wins a duel so... ok?

It’s still happening.  Like, I’m sorry to just be reposting full pages with minimal commentary, but what even?

Like, why even bother with the rest of the duels?  I get that Utena needs to build a relationship with Anthy and overcome challenges to that relationship in order for her to break the whole dueling ritual and save Anthy at the end, but like, from Akio’s perspective he’s just trying to find a duelist who can channel Dios’s power, and, uh, feels kind of like job done on this one, like he could skip to the end at this point without bothering with the rest of this year’s duelist crop?

It’s still happening, by the way.  Highlander victories were more subdued than this.

I’m with Sionji here.  What was that?

Since the sword doesn’t just disappear, we do get this cute moment of Utena sheepishly giving it back to Anthy, so that’s nice.

We also get this introduction between Utena and Touga where he comes off as... maybe not sincere exactly, but more playful & charming and less condescending & manipulative than in the show.

In the anime, we don’t see Utena leave the arena, but the episode closes on Anthy meeting up with Utena that same night.

In the manga, though, Utena, confused, embarrassed, or maybe just weirded out, kind of rushes out of the arena without anthy, conveyed by a neat handful of panels of the path to the arena in reverse:

One past the gate, Utena does pause just a moment to think about Anthy -

But unlike in the anime, Anthy doesn’t catch up to her that night.

So I guess we’re proceeding into episode 2, but where anime Utena was back to her normal unflappable self by the next day, manga Utena is still visibly shaken up.

As in episode 2, Anthy shows up in class like nothing happened, but we don’t get the cute scene of Utena going out of her way to show concern for Wakaba & trying to cheer her up, or of Wakaba and her book.  The Revolutionary Girl Utena anime already needed just way more Wakaba, if the manga keeps cutting her moments I’ll be sad about it.

Manga Wakaba does show up.  She’s somehow heard about Utena’s dorm change before Utena has, and is much more broken up about it in the manga than in the anime.  Honestly, I liked their conversation in the anime while walking over to the new dorm way better.  Wakaba was sad Utena was moving, but not wailing over it like this since it’s really not that big a deal, Wakaba hangs on her arm, they hold hands and swing their arms, Wakaba talks about how it’s supposedly been closed for ten years and teases Utena about having to clean up a derilict building, Utena gives her a piggy back ride, all in all it’s a very cute scene that also gets the necessary exposition in, and the whole time Wakaba comes across as a fun and funny, perpetually cheerful friend, before leaving Utena on the way because, well, she does live in a different dorm, and needs to get back to her own room.

Where as manga Wakaba...

Does not come off as well at all.  Chijo Saito is really dropping the ball here.

But again, I have to remind myself, she didn’t have the full anime to adapt, it’s not her fault.

As in the anime, Utena worries about the room being a mess, only to find it spotless thanks to Anthy’s cleaning, though...

That cleaning is a bit more strenuous in the manga.

And the chapter closes on Anthy introducing herself as the Rose Bride.

We’re still more or less on track with the anime plot, apart from some weird digressions at the end of the first duel.  I expect the manga to jump the rails sooner rather than later, but I’m not sure when or how.

[0zzysaurus]

how does one go about making gifs? ive always wanted to try but i have no idea where to start.

Well the way I do them is super basic. I make no-nonsense gifs with minimal to no editing - but I suppose that’s helpful if you just want to get into making simple ones!

I do all of it on iPhone, so it’s gonna be iOS specific, but as long as you have a decent screen recorder on whatever device you’re using, you shouldn’t need to download any videos.

Downloading videos is mostly done to avoid quality drops if your wifi isn’t very good. I personally screen record all my clips because cannot tell the difference between gifs made from screen recorded videos versus downloaded videos, and I just don’t have the time/space to be downloading full videos that can be potentially two hours or more. Screen recording also helps you get around copyright problems if you’re trying to download videos from YouTube. It’s a personal preference thing and if people shit on you for screen recording then they need to get a life.

The first thing I do is find a movie/show that I want to select clips from. I’ll do a quick example with a shot from The Matchmaker (1958) because I could do with some gifs of that movie.

First thing I do is find it in the highest quality I can, put my phone on horizontal & full screen (so you can get the biggest resolution you possibly can) and record a reasonable sized segment I want to make gifs of. Have some buffer space so you’re not fiddling with pauses, and record long enough to maybe get one or two good gifs out of a few minutes of recording.

Once I’ve done that, I trim the video to just be the parts I want to make into a gif. Usually something between 2 and 7 seconds helps to keep the upload size for Tumblr below 10MB, but the more colours/higher the definition the bigger the file will be regardless of runtime, so be aware. Always save as a new clip so you can keep reusing your initial screen recording.

I’ve got three clips here I wanna make into gifs.

Now I go to the best website ever, ezgif to actually rotate (crop sometimes) and convert video into gifs. It’s 100% safe and a shit load better than the native iOS gif making tools.

I’m sure there are better ways of doing this with editing software on your computer, but a) I’m too lazy for that and this works just fine for making gifs for your blog, and b) you wanted a beginner tutorial and this is something fun you can play around with if shit like Adobe AE is too daunting/expensive.

You wanna click this option:

And then use the following settings (the seconds are just the maximum length of the clip I chose, feel free to play around with those to shorten your clip more if you didn’t quite get it accurate the first time.)

The size and frame rate options here WILL make the largest file option available, but it will look the best. Lower them if you are okay compromising quality for file size, or shorten your gif if you are okay compromising length for quality.

The fire size here is JUST under Tumblr’s file limit. 10.00MiB will always be too big for Tumblr. I find optimising a gif often makes the file size BIGGER 🙄 but try it if you want. There are a lot of decent options here for a simple gif tool :]] I’m just gonna quickly crop the black bars out.

To download it, I always hit the save button and open it in View so it’s in its own tab. Then I just save it from there.

And that’s how I do it :]]

[kimdianajones]

Return to the Homeland

Hello again tumblr!

Like many else, I’ve followed the mass exodus from the other blue website and intend on revitalizing this blog. A few notable things have happened in my time away - 

I am now the full-time illustrator at Misfits Gaming Group! this has been a huge step in my career, and I couldn’t be happier with the gig. I get to work from home with awesome people from all over the world, and we’re making some really cool stuff I’m excited about.

The not-so-good news: last spring I developed tendinitis in my wrist from overuse and bad drawing habits. This has significantly cut back on how much I’ve been able to dedicate to personal art this year. Luckily with lots (and lots) of rest, patience, and PT, I’ve been doing a lot better lately. Recovery was a hard road, but I’m mostly back to typing, playing video games, working out, and drawing again!

Technology and art has changed a lot these past two years. With the fast rise of NFTs and unethical use of AI image generation, I have currently paused on posting any new artwork publicly. Right now I’m going over my options as to how I want to approach sharing my work going forward - I may or may not post things that would be heavily cropped and watermarked, for instance.

Thanks to all who followed me here from twitter, and to those who never left in the first place lol. I’m really looking forward to using this platform again!

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Short and Sweet Masterlist

fluff fics under 1k

6:15 AM - yourfriendlyblogstalker

summary: It should be against the law for any human to be awake before 8am, is Dan’s first thought of the day

#3: Safe (ao3) - somanydestiel

Summary: Fluffy drabble where Phil is punishing Dan for something and after a while it gets a bit too rough so Dan yells the safeword or something and Phil comforts him and fluff fluff fluff

A Single Step - manchestereyes

Summary: It's the night after the first Interactive Introverts shows. And Dan is certainly feeling the love.

Afternoon Naps (ao3) - Emejig16

Summary: Life can get pretty busy and sometimes a nap is needed.

All That Glitters - scifiphan

Summary: the taxi ride home after the boncas

Aqua-scaping (ao3) - R3ad3r1

Summary: Dan has a new hobby, Phil tries to be a responsible adult.

Candy Crush (ao3) - AmethystHollis

Summary: Dan wears a candy necklace. Phil has a sweet tooth. You know the rest.

Cute :D - dxnhowell

Summary: The first time Phil comments on one of Dan’s dailybooth photos.

Doing Nothing With You (ao3) - dizzy

Summary: A normal Saturday.

Doing The Dishes - phanisinlove

Summary: Dan hates doing the dishes, but this time might just be an exception.

Fifty Years Ago - insert-sugar-here

Summary: Dan and Phil are on vacation at the beach, when Explorers by Muse plays. This triggers slow dancing and singing. 

Fluff (ao3) - winstonlives

Summary: Dan and Phil adopt a dog.

Freckles And Constellations (ao3) - your_starless_eyes

Summary: Phil loves Dan with all his heart, but what if one day he's not enough for the younger boy.

Giant nerds like to slow dance - beautiphil-flower

Summary: It’s pretty much Dan and Phil slow dancing early in the morning. (based on a prompt by someone on the phanfic tumblr)

Glad to Be Home (ao3) - ticklishraspberries

Summary: Dan and Phil make up for the time they lost for intimacy on the tour.

Grow As We Go (ao3) - lilyxxxooo

Summary: dan and phil welcome 2022 with coziness and closeness. they also discuss the ring that’s resided on dans finger for a few years:) based off “grow as we go” by ben platt, ofc! 10/10 recommend a listen

Home - succubusphan

Summary: Dan comforts Phil.

I can't take my eyes off you (ao3) - R3ad3r1

Summary: Phil loves when Dan blushes.

I Will Keep the Storm Away (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Dan is scared of storms. Phil helps. That's all.

I’m Proud of Us - glitterrhowell

Summary: Dan and Phil have finished the first show of their tour and Phil can't get over how beautiful and proud of Dan he is

In Colour - chuuseokies-blog

Summary: Dan gasps. Phil’s eyes are blue, and so is the flower he holds in his hand that pokes out of the red button-down and Dan wants to sing and thank the angels in heaven above because Phil Lester is his soulmate. 

Jack and Sally - adorkablephil

Summary: Just a little ficlet about Dan and a sleepy Phil watching "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

Jumping On the Bandwagon Isn’t So Bad (ao3) - ticklishraspberries

Summary: Dan decides to jump on the ‘boys in crop tops’ trend.

Lounging Around (ao3) - your_starless_eyes

Summary: Just your run of the mill kinda domestic fluff with cuddling and kisses.

Midnight Fluff (ao3) - Misha_with_wings

Summary: Phil wants to sleep but Dan wants to cuddle. Therefore he must poke and pester Phil until he wakes up.

my very own constellation (ao3) - dizzy

Summary: Five days in Los Angeles.

National Best Friend Day (ao3) - LetterJumble

Summary: Because some holidays are better than others.

Not All the Blood Was Rushing to My Head - danhowellz

summary: dan and phil meeting for the first time in 2009 basically

Obviously In Love - dxnhowell

Summary: Dan and Phil have been dating for two years, and they’ve never told a single person about their relationship, but Dan’s mum is about to find out.

One Day (ao3) - TwistedRocketPower

Summary: Dan doesn't need a wedding, but sometimes he wants one.

Pause - scifiphan

Summary: dan and phil pause life for an afternoon nap.

Red Not White - phinalphantasy7

Summary:  Dan's still feeling sick so Phil does something to cheer him up.

repeats and replays (ao3) - Tarredion

Summary: phil's had a crush on his coworker dan for way too long. he's never had the nerve to ask him out, as much as he'd like to, but their friendship is good as it is.

one day, though, dan slips up mid conversation, and everything changes

seasick (ao3) - Fictropes

Summary: Because Phil is the only person who could get sick on a non moving boat.

slept, snooze (ao3) - Fictropes

Summary: a vibe in a text that shouldn’t be as comforting as it is.

sometimes quiet is violent (ao3) - nivi_chip

Summary: Sometimes, Dan just needs to see a pair of legs next to him.

Toast (ao3) - awrfdnp

Summary: Dan turns to Phil for adulting advice. Before he knew it, he was sent out to get lettuce from the supermarket. What he comes back with isn’t what Phil was expecting.

Together, or Not at All (ao3) - benotafraidofwriting

Summary: Dan flashes back to the day Phil asked him to co-host the radio show with him.

we never change (ao3) - nivi_chip

Summary: different decade same laundry problems

We’ve come so far Together - cactiphan

Summary: 9 years after PINOF 1, Dan buys Phil a special gift to remember their journey so far.

What Dreams Are Made Of - succubusphan

Summary: A surprise liveshow shows what the phandom always hoped to see but thought impossible.

Whatever You Want (ao3) - Phandiction

Summary: After Dan and Phil's first Day in the Life, Phil asks Dan how he liked it, and Dan tells him he didn't like it because he missed holding hands with Phil

Winding Down - truerequitedlove

Summary: Returning home and winding down.

ft. reassuring cuddles.

You’re My Pooh Bear - manchestereyes

Summary: Dan likes to hold something (or someone) while he sleeps.

you're still the one I run to (ao3) - Anonymous

Summary: Phil gets some exciting news and there's only one person he wants to share it with.

Yours (ao3) - thatsmistertoyou

Summary: Drabble in which Phil is a gross-in-love cuddle monster.

[liberty-barnes]

Just Breathe

Tom Holland x Female!Osterfield!Bisexual!Reader

Summary: Childbirth waits for no one, not even the Oscars.

Warnings: fluuuuuff, pregnant reader, mentions of childbirth, good press articles, BISEXUAL READER WOOOHOOO

Word Count: 1.5k words

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

A/N: heeeeey look @peterspideyy​ @parkersbliss​ that crazy idea i ranted to you about like six months ago finally got done! i can’t believe i did it... this feels too good to be true, is the world gonna end or something?

Masterlist 

"I don't think this is a good idea."

"Me neither."

"Please, just stay here."

You looked up to your brother and husband, frowning as you smoothed your hand over the soft black fabric of your gown.

"I am not missing the Oscars, Tom. I've still got two weeks until I'm due, it'll be fine."

You sat down on the bed and looked dejectedly at your shoes, then proceeded to throw puppy dog eyes your brother's way until Harrison had no choice but to kneel and help you put on your comfortable trainers. There's no way you're putting on your heels at 37 weeks of pregnancy.

"But what if Baby decides to come sooner? You could go into labour at any moment!"

You rolled your eyes and only raised your arms so they could help you out of bed.

"You guys are being over-dramatic. Nothing's gonna happen. We're just going to the Oscars, we'll have a good time, and hopefully, I'll leave with a little statue under my arm."

With that, you waddled out of your hotel room, ready to get into the limo.

---

"(Y/n)! It's so good to see you! You look radiant as always!"

You smiled at Kaitlyn, an interviewer you knew and trusted and rubbed your belly comfortingly. 

"Thank you, I feel like a whale, but Baby'll be here soon so it's worth it."

She smiled and asked you a bunch of questions about your movie and how you were feeling about being nominated for Best Actress.

"But anyway, how far along are you now?"

"I'm a little over 37 weeks, they should be coming soon. Tom and Haz were actually really apprehensive about me coming here since I'm so close to my due date."

She smiled and looked over at the two men, obviously on edge.

"Well, I wish you all the best and I sincerely hope you win."

You hugged her goodbye and posed for a few more pictures before being led inside by your husband.

---

"And now, for the moment you've all been waiting for..."

Everyone watched with bated breath as Brie Larson, last year's winner, got ready to announce who would take home the trophy.

"This year's winner, and taking home the Oscar for best actress in a leading role..."

Tom took your hand and you squeezed it tight, ready to applaud one of the other amazing actresses on their win.

"(Y/n) Holland, for her brilliant performance in Two Sides of the Same Coin!"

You felt like your heart was gonna beat out of your chest, run to that stage, kiss Brie, then promptly burst to flames out of sheer, unadulterated enthusiasm. Tom was hugging you and whispering how much you deserved it while your brother gently guided you to the podium. None of them would ever allow you to go up there on your own. Always one in front of you in case you trip forward and one behind you to catch you if you fall back.

Overprotective much?

As soon as you reached Brie, you hugged her tight (or as tight as you could with a human baby house separating you), taking the award while the two boys hugged her too.

"Holy Louis Tomlinson in a crop top."

The audience laughed, most of them already familiar with your strange One Direction inspired expressions.

"Wow, I didn't actually think I was gonna win this, everyone had such amazing performances. I-It's an honour, really. Two Sides of the Same Coin was a project very near and dear to my heart, so I'd like to thank the amazing Drew Barrymore, who wrote and directed the movie."

The room erupted in cheers and the woman smiled at you from her place on the front row.

"Bisexual representation is something we don't get very often, and when we do, it's always misjudged. So thank you for showing the world what bisexuality really is, and for giving me a chance to live out my dreams of kissing lots of people. This idiot tied me down too soon."

You pointed behind you at Tom, hearing his appalled squeak along with Harrison's guffaw of a laugh. 

In other news, the baby was starting to inconvenience you slightly. Baby had been going crazy since last night (not that you'd tell the boys) and the Braxton-Hicks were killing you, but it only got worse now.

"I'd also like to thank my amazing costars, Zendaya, Bella Thorne, and Owen Patrick Joyner, it was awesome to make out with you all..."

The crowd laughed while you felt something trickle down your legs.

Oh.

OH.

You'll never live this down, that's for sure.

"Uh, before I finish can one of you idiots call the car and get them to come to the exit please and thank you? Now as I was saying-"

"Wait, why?"

You turned to your brother and smiled innocently.

"Oh, my water just broke."

The crowd cheered.

Tom screamed.

Harrison fell to the floor, unconscious.

You sighed.

"New plan, can anyone try to wake my brother while my hus-" 

You looked at Tom, frantically doing small back and forths between you and his best friend, unsure of what to do. 

"-While someone else calls the car because both of them are apparently useless."

"We need to get you to the hospital!"

His terrified scream could be heard all through the room, even with no mic.

"What? No! I need to finish my acceptance speech, then go back to the hotel to shower and maybe take a little nap and then go to the hospital. My water just broke, Thomas, we have time, calm your tits."

You turned back fully to the mic, facing the hysteric faces of the crowd, very entertained by the exchange.

"Now as I was saying, I want to thank the amazing team that worked on this movie, you're all amazing and it was such a good experience. I'd also like to thank my family for always being there for me and supporting me and Haz in our acting careers. Thank you to my brother, even if he's unconscious right now, he'll just watch it on Youtube later, for literally forcing me to go to the audition. And lastly, I'd like to thank my wonderful husband, who hopefully hasn't passed out yet, for always supporting me and being my biggest rock through everything. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to deliver a baby, you know, just normal Saturday night stuff."

---

An Oscar in hand and another... down her legs?

(Y/n) Holland sure gave the Oscars something to be entertained by on this last Saturday. The wife of fellow actor Tom Holland looked radiant in her custom-made Valentino dress, looking ready for a night of fun.

(Y/n) was nominated for this year's Best Actress in a Leading Role award, alongside Meryl Streep, Margot Robbie, Cate Blanchett, and Tessa Thompson, but the Oscar went to her from her brilliant performance in Two Sides of the Same Coin. But it was during her acceptance speech that things got... slippery.

At 37 weeks of pregnancy, the Holland baby was ready to come at any minute, but apparently, theatrics run in the family. The actress was in the middle of her speech when she felt her water break, pausing in her talking to request a car be called.

You'd think her husband, Tom, and brother Harrison Osterfield, overprotective as they are, would be fully prepared! Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for our entertainment, they were not. Harrison went unconscious after hearing the news, dropping to the floor and earning himself a minor concussion, much to his sister's amusement

[image1-harrison-ice-pack.png]

@ynholland: "Don't worry, when you go into labour, I'll be with you every step of the way." Said Harrison Osterfield, then proceeded to pass out, get a minor concussion, and miss the whole delivery.😂 Good job, little bro👍

And just when you thought she couldn't get any better, she finishes her acceptance speech with: "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to deliver a baby, you know, just normal Saturday night stuff." We have no choice but to stan this iconic queen!

But for the news you've all been waiting for, Oscar Robert Holland (yes, the middle name is a homage to Robert Downey Jr. himself, we're not crying, you are!) was born just twelve hours later. Tom let know through a beautiful Instagram picture that he is in fact "perfectly healthy and loved by everyone already".

[image2-tom-and-oscar.png]

@tomholland2013: I present to you, my best creation to this date: Oscar Robert Holland. Thank you all for your prayers and kind messages, our boy is perfectly healthy and loved by everyone already❤️

But of course, Uncle Haz wouldn't stay behind.

[image3-haz-and-oscar.png]

@hazosterfield: Since I know you've all been worried sick and desperate to know how the baby is... I'm doing just fine, it's just a minor concussion :) Oh and my godson's great too.

And just to prove that the Osterfields are indeed the royal family of comedy, we leave with this wonderful picture posted to the happy mum's very own Instagram.

[image4-yn-and-oscars.png]

@ynholland: Guess I was so good they gave two Oscars instead of one ;)

-Written by Kaitlyn Storm

so anyway, Two Sides of the Same Coin is a movie idea i got a while ago and should maybe try to write one of these days but oh well or something. anyway, i’m not gonna rant about it here cause it’d be too long but i hope you enjoyed this and don’t forget to like/comment/reblog if you feel like it!

-Love, Miah

«────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ──────» 

Taglists: (if your name is striked through it means for some reason tumblr wouldn’t let me tag you) 

PERMA TAG 

@adriannajackson123​ @theamazingtomholland​ @inlovewithmobtom​ @andycanbeemotional​ @officiallyunofficialperson​ @lost-in-the-stars03​ @jeezkiddo​ @a-singleboat​ @wunder-13 @highlydisfunctional1​ @ellyseveronica​ @inthecornerchair​ @harishaanne​ @anjalika03​ @lozzypoz321​ @mendes-marvel​ @sovereignparker​ @bubbles-the-powerpuffgurl 

 MARVEL ACTORS 

@sarcasticallywitty15​ @agentnataliahofferson​ @onelovesr​ @agentnataliahofferson​ @parkerpetertingle​ @juliebean247​ @frustratingpaperclip​ @tacobacoyeet​ 

HOLLAND & CO. 

@sarcasticallywitty15​ @agentnataliahofferson​ @onelovesr​ @agentnataliahofferson​ @zeusmyster​ @parkerpetertingle​ @juliebean247​ @joyleenl​ @quaksonhehe​ @clara-licht​ @frustratingpaperclip​  @tutuabby28​ @tacobacoyeet​ 

LGBTQ+ 

@quaksonhehe​ 

[rizahawkais]

Hi Nia! You're gifs are so pretty! Is it possible for you to show how you get your WandaVision gifs too look so clear and hd? And how do you do your colorings too? (specifically the wanda maximoff in episode 3 gifset ITS GORGEOUS) I'm new to giffing and all the tutorials are kind of old. It's okay if you don't want to though! I understand it may be time consuming.

omg no! never feel intimidated to ask!! i don’t mind at all!

so, i’m going to show you how i made and coloured this gif

mostly bc it’s the only gif in that set w text and i’m going to share my text settings too!

tutorial is below :)

WHAT KIND OF VIDEOS ARE BEST?

.mkv files (the bigger the better BUT i usually think anything above 5 gb is excessive and unnecessary for an episode of television BUT for a movie worth it) itunes downloads (logolesspro on twitter, hd-source on tumblr, live-action-raws on tumblr have some DEPENDING on what you’re looking for) (also, there’s a chance that if you search "show/movie hd download tumblr” you’ll find a tumblr with its itunes download available)

THAT IS IT NO OTHER TYPE OF FILES MAKE YOUR GIFS LOOK GOOD

- my suggestion is always if its new (like just came out the past month) t*rrent it! it’ll be downloaded quickly and .mkv files look the best! BUT if not check the sources above see who has the BIGGEST file if they even have what you’re looking for and then if not then you look to t*rrenting!!

here are the wandavision files i use so you can see!!

SCREENCAPPING

-if you have windows use potplayer! i have a mac so i can’t show you how to use it and it’s not available for me :( HOWEVER back when i had a windows potplayer was the best method in screencapping!!

-I HAVE A MAC! so i use mpv!! (go to mpv.io and follow the directions) BUT DON’T DOWNLOAD THE LATEST ONE (it has a bug that skips frames) try each before the latest one bc from what i heard different ones work differently for everyone!! and i don’t know which one i use (yikes!) THERE ISN’T THAT MANY I PROMISE AND IT’S WORTH IT BC MPV IS THE BEST (i used to use adapter but they didn’t take impressive screencaps in my opinion and it was evident in my gifs you can see it too! )

create a folder for your screencaps! and make sure to rmb the directory order! now we want to create a text file on our built in textedit app on mac! type up all this down below (i like jpg but you can replace jpg w png if you want) AND SAVE THE FILE AS mpv.conf THIS IS IMPORTANT SO DON’T FORGET IT! save it somewhere you’ll find easily and NEVER delete it until you don’t use mpv anymore

just in case you don’t know what to insert after, go to your screencaps folder

now you want to open mpv and go to the corner towards mpv -> preferences and they’ll tell you that there is no .conf file SO GO LOOK FOR THE TEXT FILE WE JUST MADE AND DRAG IT TO THE FOLDER THEY OPENED FOR US AFTER SAYING THERE IS NO .CONF FILE

(i learned all this from @kylos tutorial!! so if any of what i just said about setting up mpv makes NO SENSE to you check out their tutorial at kylos(.)tumblr(.)com/post/178497909311)

now we can screencap!

so let’s find the scene we want RIGHT BEFORE and MAKE SURE SUBTITLES ARE OFF

i pause and then press (option/alt + s) and then SCREENCAPS ARE BEING TAKEN!! and to end the screencaps being taken you once again press (option/alt + s)!!

now we want to delete the excess frames! and put it all into one folder!! DO NOT DELETE FRAMES IN THE MIDDLE OF WHAT YOU WANT TO GIF!! WHEN YOU SKIP FRAMES IT WILL BE NOTICEABLE!!

MAKING THE GIF

this method isn’t used that much BUT I LOVE IT so this is how i put my frames in! first i check to see the size of my frames: 1920 x 1080

so i create a NEW file on photoshop with those dimensions w these settings

now i set my tool on photoshop to path selection tool bc if you have it set on smth like move tool or crop tool at the end you might end up moving or cropping frames you don’t want to!

ok so now we select ALL our frames and drag it on top of our new file on photoshop and the MOMENT we see our first frame in photoshop JUST KEEP CLICKING ENTER until all the frames are loaded!!

you can do file -> scripts -> load files into stack but it is WAYYY slower in my opinion!

now i crop out the excess BUT i don’t resize the gif yet! the dimensions wandavision is filmed in is 4:3 so i go to crop and set the settings to this:

MAKE SURE IT’S ON RATIO SO WE’RE PRESERVING THE ORIGINAL SIZE JUST CUTTING OFF THE BLACK EDGES!! We are going from 1920 x 1080 to 1440 x 1080 this is the dimensions after i cropped

WE ARE KEEPING THE QUALITY BY NOT CHANGING THE DIMENSIONS OF ANYTHING INSIDE !!

now we want to go to actions and create an action!! open up actions w one of these two depending on what your dash looks like!!

so we create an action with this button on the bottom of actions and we’re gonna title it making a gif and hit record!!

NOW LET’S GOOOOO!!

1. make sure you have timeline on your dash!

2. create frame animation (if you see create video timeline just click the arrow next to the button to see your other option which is frame animation!!)

3. now let’s meet our best friend!! the little bar in the top right corner that has all the commands for making our gifs and MAKE FRAMES FROM LAYERS

4. WE HAVE TO SHARPEN OUR GIFS NOW BUT TO DO THAT WE NEED TO CONVERT TO A SMART OBJECT SO NOW WE ARE GOING TO CONVERT TO VIDEO TIMELINE there are two ways: the button in the bottom left corner or the button in the top right corner w all the other commands!

5. select -> all layers DON’T MANUALLY SELECT THEM ALL BC THE ACTION WILL ONLY SELECT THAT SAME NUMBER OF FRAMES SO IF THERE ARE MORE FRAMES YOU WON’T GET THEM IN THE SMART OBJECT!!

6. filter -> convert for smart filters

7. NOW WE SHARPEN!! (filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen) i sharpen twice!! first, make sure we are on legacy w more accurate and remove gaussian blue! the first sharpening will be 500% with 0.4 px radius. NOW SHARPEN AGAIN (filter -> sharpen -> smart sharpen) also w legacy, more accurate and remove gaussian blur BUT this time 10% with a 10.0 px radius!

8. it’s hd now!! so let’s flatten frames into clips!! go to the top right magic button again!! and you should see a pop up saying layers are being made

9. now we convert back to frame animation w either the bottom left button or our magic top right command center!

10. make frames from layers

11. select all frames w our magic command button

12. set the animation delay to 0.05 THAT IS THE BEST ONE ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS only use 0.06 when the character is moving really fast in the video itself and it makes the gif itself look awkward BUT NEVER GO ABOVE 0.06 it’ll look slow and laggy and we don’t want that and don’t go below 0.05 bc then it’ll be tooo fast and we don’t want that either!

13. now delete the very first frame on the timeline bc it is an oversharpened duplicate of the second frame! end the recording w this button!

this is what your action should look like expanded! if you made mistakes on the way and it shows up you can just click the specific step and press the trash can on the action tab to delete in from the order!!

NOW AFTER LOADING YOUR FRAMES AND CROPPING THE EDGES OF YOUR FRAMES IF YOU NEED TO JUST PLAY THE ACTION AND THEN YOUR GIF WILL BE MADE FOR YOU!!!!

now i delete some unnecessary frames in the beginning and end and this is what my gif looks like (the size was 46 mb and the limit is 10 mb so the dimensions of the gif are 540 x 405 to get it to 5 mb BUT I HAVEN’T CROPPED IT YET SO THIS IS ME CROPPING JUST TO SHOW YOU WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE)

CROPPING THE GIF

in my opinion if you want your gif to look hd you shouldn’t crop before you sharpen!! i believe that if you crop before you sharpen you don’t allow photoshop to sharpen all the pixels whereas if you crop beforehand there is less to work with!!

dimensions is all up to you!! just make sure to go by tumblr rules!! 540 is the max width and if you want to make two gifs per row then my suggested width is 268 and for three gifs per row my suggested is 177 px! Just have the right width and the length can be whatever you want!!

now i’m going to crop my gif to 540 by 590!!

NOW THIS IS WHAT MY GIF LOOKS LIKE!

COLOURING BASICS

let me show you the best adjustment tools in my opinion and a brief explanation for what they do!!

brightness/contrast: pretty simple increase/decrease the brightness/contrast BUT one of my techniques for when i first start colouring a gif is i select all my frames and do nothing to the settings of the adjustment but i set the layer to screen LIKE THIS

curves: ik others use curves to change brightness/contrast w the squiggly thing BUT i like it to set a white point and black point, this is also a technique i use when i first start colouring a gif when screen doesn’t look good for me SO you use white point to select a pixel on the gif to set as the lightest color on the gif (setting the white point) and you use black point to select a pixel on the gif to set as the darkest colour on the gif (setting the black point) usually the white point makes it TOO bright and that’s why we use the black point to counter it and same goes for when i use screen with brightness/contrast, it gets too bright so i use black point to counter it below is the button for white point and the button for black point, respectively they are shaped as color picker tools

vibrance: generally, i never use this except for color p*rn sets but they work really well in making colors seem more strong

hue/saturation: like vibrance, i never use this except for color p*rn sets but this adjustment is to help change the colors or hue of a color for example: turn blue into purple or turn a blue into a little lighter shade of blue

color balance: I ALWAYS USE THIS!! except for in black and white gifs BUT THIS IS MY GO TO AND IF I DON’T USE IT MY GIFS ARE JUST BLAND i feel like color balance is what essentially balances the colors on your gif and adds dimension to it, it makes your gif go from looking way too yellow to a more golden neutral look and it is an essential adjustment in my opinion

channel mixer: i rarely use channel mixer BUT it is so so useful when you are working w a dark scene just play w the settings and all of a sudden all the blue in a dark scene will be a little more yellow and red and your scene will kind of just look brighter and more visible

selective color: THIS IS ALSO AN ESSENTIAL this helps SPECIFIC colors pop you’re working on a scene where there is too much red on someones face you use this tool to remove the magentaness from the yellow section OR when you feel someones face is TOO yellow and needs more blush you add more magenta in the yellow section of selective color

gradiant map: gradiant map is perfect when you’re lazy if you feel like your gif looks more neutral and you want some red in it but you don’t want to mess with any other adjustments just set a red to black gradiant on soft overlay with a very low opacity and BOOM slightly red but not too much red added!

NOW TO COLOR THE GIF!

today i have decided to start with a brightness layer set on screen

and this is what we got!

now that’s a little to bright and washed out in my opinion SOOOO to counteract it, i’m going to use my black point tool in curves and i’m going to select this point on the gif (it’s better to choose smth in the background and not smth that’s paid attention to such as monica’s hair or either of their eyelashes)

now my gif looks like this! the base color is complete!

now i think i need to balance all this yellow and red! SOOOO WE GONNA USE COLOR BALANCE!!

i think the best way to use color balance is to keep swinging the balancer until you see what you like and then keep going midtones i think i want more red and i don’t want a cyan midtone and then for shadows i think i want more cyan to counter the redness of the gif but highlights i don’t touch that much NOW HERE ARE MY SETTINGS SO YOU CAN SEE

and this is what my gif looks like

now you can stop here if you want but in my opinion i think the gif looks a lil too dead still SO IMMA USE SELECTIVE COLOR

i think there needs to be a lot lot more RED so i amp up the yellow magenta and black in the red! but i also think the yellows need to be LESS RED so i remove magenta from the yellow! and bc there’s some cyan and blue bc of monica and the flowers in the background im going to make the cyans more cyan and the blues a lil more black! i’m going to remove some yellows from the magenta!! and i add more black to the neutrals and black!! i think it’s always important to add more black to neutral and black bc it adds more depth to the gif by not just making it a bunch of bright colors and having dark colors to contrast to!! my settings are below!

and the result!

now let’s see everything together!

and the before and after!

I HOPE MY COLOURING EXPLANATION MADE SENSE!! if not you can always ask me more questions i don’t mind!!

ADDING SUBTITLES

we want to grab the text tool!

make a text box from anywhere in the middle from the left to right edge. this is so we can make sure our text is centered and will be in the same place for when we have sets w more than one gif w text!

type your text out and make sure you highlight the whole text so that all the settings apply to EACH character! you can find the alignments (for center) in the paragraph tab!

now lets right click on the text layer and go to blending options! add stroke and drop shadow!

now drag it to the desired height you would like and make sure to keep it in mind for when you have more than one subtitled gif in a set!

NOW TO MAKE SURE THE TEXT STAYS IN PLACE AND THE BLENDING STAYS YOU HAVE TO CONVERT TO SMART OBJECT!!

if you want to only have the text applied to certain frames instead of all frames, select the frames you don’t want by clicking the first frame in ur don’t want section ON THE TIMELINE and WHILST HOLDING SHIFT click the last frame of ur don’t want section and then toggle the eye switch next to the text layer

now you see the text

now you don’t

tip: use opacity to fade the text in and out!

the text is going to be on all my frames so i don’t need to toggle the eye but i just wanted to show you just in case!!

now here’s my FINAL RESULT

save for web (file -> export -> save for web) 

your gifs have to always be under 10 mb! so, if your WAYYY overboard YOU HAVE TO DELETE FRAMES! or you can divide the gif in two and have two gifs instead of one! however, if you plan on going the deleting frames route MAKE SURE YOU DELETE FROM THE BEGINNING OR END OF YOUR SELECTION i promise you that most of us won’t notice that your characters dialogue is being cut off BUT WE WILL NOTICE IF FRAMES ARE BEING SKIPPED so, don’t delete frames in the middle of ur gif!! idc how little you do it IT WILL RUIN YOUR GIF AND I SAY THIS FROM EXPERIENCE i would delete every fifth frame to cut down my gifs and that may seem like not that big of a deal BUT IT IS my gif looked choppy and poor so it is way better to cut from the end/beginning of the gif

ANOTHER LAST PIECE OF ADVICE in the bottom left of when the save for web menu shows up THERE’S A PREVIEW BUTTON click on it! it’ll show you your gif on your default browser and show you what it’ll look like once uploaded! this is perfect to check the speed of ur gif and the colouring and to notice if there’s a problem with your subtitles or maybe there’s an obvious jump in frames you never noticed before!! i always use preview bc the built-in photoshop viewer of ur gif shows the colors differently and the speed is NEVER ACURRATE!

I USED THESE SAVE SETTINGS!! many say to use selective pattern but i DISAGREE and i think these save settings are the ✨ best ✨

OK NOW THAT IS THE END OF THIS VERY LONG GIF TUTORIAL!! I HOPE THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED!! IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK I SINCERELY DON’T MIND!! JUST DON’T BE RUDE OR ANYTHING BC PPL HAVE BEEN RECENTLY :(

I WISH YOU ALL THE LUCK AND FUN IN YOUR GIFFING ADVENTURES !!

[hope-mikaelson]

HOW TO GIF USING TIMELINE INSTEAD OF FRAMES

I’m coming to change your life and teach you how to make gifs using timeline animation and screen recording. This is an update of a previous tutorial I made that used Quicktime Player but we’re going to bypass quicktime player in this one since I don’t find it works as well anymore. The benefit to this method in my opinion is that it’s fast, requires little set up per gif, and gets rid of any mess regarding frame skipping and glitching.

what you’ll need: photoshop, basic photoshop knowledge, an HD video, VLC player. 

 I know lots of people use frame animation. I used to always make my gifs that way. This is just a way that I found worked better for me and was a lot faster and made gifs come out cleaner (making frame caps got real slow on my computer for some strange reason). 

ANYWAY so what you need for this, most importantly, is an HD video, VLC Player and Photoshop. At least for the screen recording process. But if you are making gifs of short videos like youtube or something, you don’t necessarily have to record them with quick time as long as you download them. VLC player is super easy to download if you don’t have it already just google it. There’s a MAC and PC version. Now here we go:

First, I open the video I want to gif in VLC player. For this tutorial, it’s an episode of Legacies in 1080p. I get the video to about 30 seconds before the scene I want to gif (keep in mind you can do the whole scene, you’re going to cut it up later). Pause the video. 

Then you’ll go up to “playback” in the menu and select record. 

Play the scene through and when you’re done, go back up there and click record again to turn recording off. 

The video should save automatically to your video or movie folder on your computer. Mine saves in user/movies on a mac. You’ll see that they save with these VLC labels so if you can’t find yours, try searching for that. 

I’m going to click the one I want, and just drag it straight to photoshop. When you do that, it’ll open like this:

That window at the bottom is called “timeline.” If you don’t see it, go up to the menu, select window then timeline and it’ll appear. 

Now your video is ready to work with. The first thing you’ll need to do is change the speed and then the size. To change the speed, you’ll go down to timeline and select the tiny arrow in the far right corner of the video. 

[NOTE: IT IS IMPORTANT TO ALWAYS CHANGE THE SPEED AS YOUR FIRST STEP. Once your video is converted to a smart object in the resizing step, you can’t alter the timing as easily.]

Change the speed from 100% to 50% or 40 if you need it slower. 

Next, you’ll need to double the length of the video since you just cut that speed in half. Just grab ahold of the far right side of the video and drag it to the right until it won’t let you drag it any further. 

Now in the timeline, you’ll see three things: the red line, and the two gray ends at the left and right sides. Those can all be moved. Anything between the gray ends is what will be saved when you export. The red line effects what you see on your screen. I’m going to drag the red line to the point I want a gif of just to help guide my cropping process. It’s landed here. 

Now, you can use the crop tool to select the shape of your gif and what you want in frame. Since this tutorial is about giffing on timeline, I’ll assume you already know how to crop. But if you have questions, ask me. Cropping my gif got me here:

Now, I need to resize it so the gif isn’t 2930832 pixels. I go to image u in the top menu bar, and then image size. And resize the width to 540 for tumblr and here I am. 

Photoshop will ask if you’re okay with converting the video, select convert.

You’ll see the video get smaller and you’re here:

I zoom in to the size I want it for editing and now you can begin adding your sharpening and coloring. 

To sharpen, make sure your video layer is still selected over on the right, and then select filter + sharpen + smart sharpen

Now add your sharpening settings as you like them. Mine look like this, and as you can see when I add them, they are added to the video layer on the right:

Now that you have a sharpening, you can add coloring as you see fit. It’s up to you how you add your colorings. I like to keep mine inside the video group on the right. If you put the outside of it/above it, they’ll show up on the timeline as separate layers. That’s dealers choice. Once you apply your coloring, it should look like this:

Once you have your scene colored, sharpened, and properly sized, you can select the area you want to export as a gif. Use the gray sliders on the timeline to select the area you want. Keep it to roughly 6-8 seconds long for larger gifs so you can fit under the tumblr limit. But this will vary depending on colors and such. 

The little mountains with the slider underneath the timeline will help you to zoom in and out along the timeline to focus in on smaller chunks. 

As you can see down here, I selected the area I want to gif for my first gif. 

Now, I can hit file, export, save for web and export my first gif. 

[Full disclosure, I went back and resized mine before I added it here because I realized 540 was going to be too big for the tutorial but that’s the width i usually use for big gifs. ]

Once that’s saved, you’ll be brought back to your photoshop document. And now, you can go right ahead and make the next gif in your set without having to do or change anything besides the sliders. So I’m going to just move the sliders over and gif Rafael. 

As you can see, he’s a little off center. So I’m just going to grab right ahold of the video layer using the move tool, and move him over. 

Now I export + save for web again. And save my second gif. 

And I can keep going if I choose to. 

The beauty of this method is that once you get set up, you can make 934828423 gifs from one scene at once and you only have to color, crop, size, and sharpen once. Sometimes, you’ll need to make some coloring or placement adjustments along the way, but it’s al in one document. And you’ll also see that in time, the early steps like timing and sizing come in second nature and take just a few simple seconds making this method really quick and breezy. 

[galindathrop]

Warning: Image heavy

By popular demand, aka 2 people, here is a gif tutorial. This will include how I do screenshots and actually make the gif. 

You will need: 

Photoshop. I use the Photoshop CC 2021 version but that’s only because I’m paying for it. There are sites you can download Photoshop on but I prefer the legal way. 

MPV player or any screencapping program that takes continuous screencaps. 

IMPORTANT: As I have learned, the video file you use must be 1080p or else they will look like absolute crap. Always try to get a 1080p copy no matter how long it takes. 

THE PROGRAM

As stated before, I use MVP player. That can be downloaded here. If you have a mac, I would move the app off of your desktop after downloading and to the applications folder. That way it is out of your iCloud and saves so much pain and frustration. 

Try to download the 0.29.0 version because later versions on macs have a glitch where there are duplicate screenshots (according to @/kylos). I had to download the 0.29.1 version because the other version won’t open at all for me after the last apple update (fuck bug sur). Anyway, I’ll probably mess up explaining this part so you can find out how to get it working here and here. 

To actually screencap, press option + s. The left and right arrow keys will help you move through the video. For more shortcuts, click here. 

Once that is all downloaded, now you can begin the giffing process.

THE PROCESS

Load the film you want to gif into the program, which is just a simple drag and drop. Then go through and find the scene you want to screencap. 

Once I find the scene, I pause and then press option + s as mentioned above and screencap the scene. Press  option + s again to stop capturing.

Now you go open photoshop and go to File --> script --> load files into stack

Then this will pop up. Hit browse... 

Then open your folder with the screenshots, select the screenshots by dragging down, and then click open.

This is what it should look like. Now go through and delete the extra images you don’t need. 

Now we need to crop the future gif. Click the cropping tool and at the top left there is a way to set the crop dimensions. 

The ones I have saved are Tumblr’s dimension sizes. The height doesn’t matter as much as the width does. For Tumblr; 540px is for one post across, 268px is 2 posts across, and 178px is 3 across. When doing 3 across make the last one 177px or else the last one will be blurry. Click here for more info on sizing. 

Today I’m going to make this 540:280. When you’re satisfied with the crop, click enter. 

Here is where the fun begins! I downloaded @kylos​ gif action here. To activate it double click on it. To view your actions go to window --> actions. A window should pop up with your action. 

There will be a folder in there called GIF ACTION. Open the folder and select the SELECT HERE!. With that selected click on the play button to activate the action. 

Just like magic, you now have a gif! Your layers panel should now look like this. Next we just need to resize the gif. 

Go to Image --> Image size and this box will pop up. 

Resize the image to your crop size and hit ok. Your image will now be a lot smaller. 

Next I go to Filter --> Blur --> Gaussian Blur. Set the blur to 1.0. 

Now this will take away the sharpness when I just want it to be a bit softer. To fix this double-click on the lines next to the smart filter. 

This will bring up another box to change the opacity of the blur. I change it to 20% or less. This one I’ll make 15%. Hit ok when done. 

One last thing is I fix the radius of the sharpening. Click on the bottom sharpening layer. A box should open.

Change the radius to 0.4 and hit ok. 

Before closing, open the timeline window by window --> timeline. If you want to cut down on the frames, grab either one of the grey bars on the beginning and end of the gif and drag to where you want it to start and end. 

It’s now time to save. Go to File --> Export --> Save for Web (Legacy)...

This will pop up. Here you can see how many frames you have and how big the file is. I usually start off as close to 10mb as I can get. There are multiple ways you can save it but here are my settings. 

Then save your gif to wherever you want it. But we aren’t done yet. 

Close the gif. You don’t have to save the psd but you can if you want to. Then reopen the gif in Photoshop. Everything you used before should still be open, aka the windows for actions and timeline. 

Your screen will look like this. As you may notice, the gif speed is all over the place. The best speed for gifs is 0.5. This guide is very helpful. 

To get the gif to that speed, I dowloaded another action here. Add it to your actions as instructed above. 

Open the Change to .05 folder and select the SELECT HERE!. With that selected click on the play button to activate the action, same as above. 

And viola it is now the correct speed! But our gif doesn't look too great. It’s time to fix that up with some coloring. 

COLORING

These are my coloring layers.  Make sure they are on top of all of the layers. 

Here is what it looks like now after the coloring. You may notice the effect has only been added to one layer of the X amount of frames you have.

To fix this select the coloring layers and then go to the 3 lines at the top right of the box. 

Click on this to open a dropdown box and click match layer across frames. 

Make sure all the checks are marked and hit ok. 

Now all the layers have the coloring layers applied. 

Remember when we were saving the gif and it was over 10mb. Well now it’s time to fix that. 

I like to go in and check the size after coloring because sometimes that can lower the gif size. 

It did in this case so that creates less work. Close out of that and go back to your timeline. It’s time to delete some frames. 

You can select multiple frames at once by holding down shift as you select. I typically click around 5 to 10 at a time and make sure you don’t miss a single frame. I’m going to select more towards to the end. 

Then click delete (the trashcan icon). 

Go back to export. If it is still too big delete some frames. In my case it was still too big so I have to delete more frames. 

I now have it to around where I want it. It is less than 10 mb and sometimes that is better. So save your gif. I usually save it as [filename]final. 

QUALITY

To check the quality of the gif I go to Tumblr and go to make a photo post. 

DO NOT post. Instead save it as a draft. Go to your drafts and see how it looks from your dash. If it looks pixelated then go back into photoshop and delete fames. Repeat the following steps until it is to your liking. 

And then you have your final product! 

I hope this was helpful to you and I can’t wait to see what you create with this. 

[braunbakery]

salvation, maybe (i)

☞ reiner braun x reader [fem bodied] [chapter word count: 2.5k]

☞ sfw, angst, fluff, post-season 3 [after 4 year time jump], season 4 spoilers

☞ cross-posted on ao3 (very much ahead on ao3, just wanted to bring it to tumblr)

☞ fic plot: you have walked these streets many times before. you have passed this bench many times before. you have seen this man (lost in his thoughts, always drifting, always looking lost) many times before. but this time, this time you take a seat.

next

i. hero

the wind blows your long skirt against your legs as you make your way down the street, shoes tapping against the cobblestone of the ground. liberio is reasonably busy and you find yourself accidentally knocking shoulders with a multitude of people. the slightly chilly late morning air nips at the skin on your face and you instinctively wrap your jacket a little tighter around yourself, repeating the list of what you need to get in your head.

eventually, you reach the less populated part of the market street. you know that you don't really have any business being here - all of your necessities lie on the busier side of the street (probably all running out at this point, judging by the ever-increasing crowd.) but, you have become so accustomed to making your way to the quiet end of this street to see if he still sits on the bench in front of the broken fountain, slumped over and staring at his knees. sometimes, on sunnier days, his long off-white jacket is crumpled next to him. sometimes he is leaning back, his neck tilted back towards the sky and his arms tightly crossed across his broad chest.

but the constant remains, he is always here.

since he had returned from wherever the previous warrior mission had taken him, every morning he sat at this bench in such an obvious amount of distress that you wondered how come no one else ever said anything. did his comrades never take notice of his seemingly permanently furrowed brow, or his fists that somehow were always clenching and unclenching? or were they all also fighting their own battles, sitting on their own benches and being watched by their own strangers?

his name is reiner braun.

you know this name, everyone knows this name. everyone knows his close-cropped blonde hair, his broad build, his sullen face (you wonder if he only smiles on command). he and his comrades bring honour to liberio and offer an excuse to marley for why you and your neighbours deserve to live. you want to feel grateful and proud, but as you watch him stare mindlessly into the distance, hands absent-mindedly playing at his uniform collar, all you can feel is pity.

sometimes you feel yourself slowly gravitating towards him, your feet moving before your mind even realizes it. today is one of those days when his sorrow is contagious, radiating out of him and into you, and suddenly you really are moving. it has been almost a month since he has been coming to this bench and sitting in silence. it has been almost a month of you idly watching him, wondering if you should say anything. if there's anything you can even say. but, he is a soldier. if you don't act now, he will be whisked away to whatever new conflict marley has conveniently found themselves in. you just want to say something. anything.

and before you know it, you have somehow planted yourself a few inches away from him on the other side of the battered wooden bench. reiner shifts in his seat, but doesn't say a word. your thoughts are racing and you contemplate whether or not it's too late to back out now. whether or not you can sit in silence and pretend your feet were just tired and you needed a rest (despite the fact you have only been outside for all of fifteen minutes.) if you seemed as melancholy as he seems to you, would you want someone to offer you solace? to acknowledge your struggle? you don't know, you don't know, you don't know. and before you know it, words of no real value are tumbling out of your mouth.

"not too bad of a day, huh?" you awkwardly say, eyes flitting towards reiner quickly to see if he will acknowledge the stranger trying to making a conversation about the god damn weather. reiner shifts in his seat, his dazed stare cut short as his body slightly slowly turns towards you. he still doesn't actually look at you. but, to be fair, you still haven't actually looked at him.

"i suppose," he mumbles, looking around the street as another gust blows through liberio, sending papers flying into the air.

"it's a shame the fountain doesn't work. maybe it would've made the day a little better," you comment, your eyes glancing back at the battered fountain behind the bench. it is years old, the white stone now faded into different hues of brown and green, and vines hooking and wrapping their way all around the structure. you suspect that maybe it had never actually worked at all.

"maybe," reiner replies. his head turns towards you, watching you crane your neck behind you to see the fountain. secretly, you don't want to turn your head back and witness him probably ignore your efforts of conversation. can you blame him? he has seen war and has been through hell, from paradis to the endless conflict between the mid-east allies. why would he decide now that a fountain no one actually cares about is what peaks his attention? "but, i think we'd have a bunch of kids jumping in if it did work. so, could be for the best."

realistically, the fountain is too small for anyone bigger than a toddler to attempt to climb in. but, you still find yourself slightly smiling in relief at his response, realising that maybe you weren't completely hopeless and maybe reiner didn't truly want to be completely alone.

"i suppose," you echo his earlier response back to him, no longer craning your neck and returning to face forward with him once more. your smile grows even wider as you notice the corners of his mouth softly curling upwards. much better. your eyes meet his for a moment and you can't look away from the deep hazel, the warm welcome. he is the one to break the stare, eyes glancing off to a passerby.

"you have a thing for fountains then?" he jokes. but, as you stay looking at him, you can see that despite his attempts at some kind of humor, his gaze is still crestfallen and his fists are still clenched at his sides. you don't know what to say.

"no, just for nice days," you retort, offering another toothy smile. like reiner, it doesn't particularly reach your eyes. maybe this is a mistake. maybe you are just bothering him and tiring him out from making him have to put up some moderately pleasant facade. maybe this is just for your own gain. because you are alone. because you are lonely. you grab at the empty woven basket next to you, wondering if you should just leave.

but the truth is the truth, and you are alone and so is he. is it such a crime to maybe want to be alone together?

"are you just out getting groceries?" reiner casually inquires, shoving his balled fists into the pockets of his long jacket. he looks at you again. everytime he has ackowledged you so far, a part of you feels that maybe this is okay. that maybe the small moments where he isn't lost in his own head and instead spares looks at a stranger makes it all okay. in the end, you don't really know him, and he doesn't really know you. but do you need to know someone to want them to feel okay?

"yeah," you say, leaning foward to take a peek at the busier end of the street, "but i think i'm a bit late. everything other than maybe bread is probably gone by now," even though this is going to be an inconvenience, you don't find yourself regretting it. you're happy to sit here next to reiner, even if it means another morning of trying to wake up early and make your way through the masses.

"huh," reiner huffs out a small chuckle, eyeing your empty basket, "you should probably go grab that bread then."

you slowly stand up, slinging the basket at the crook of your arm and turn to face reiner. he looks up at you questioningly. there was no way you had waited almost a month just to have some measly conversation about nice days and a century-old fountain.

"do you want to come?" you ask, trying to feign at least a fraction of the confidence you wish you held in this particular moment, "to the bakery, i mean." obviously he knows what you mean. why would you say that? reiner slightly raises his eyebrows at your invitation, but deep down, you are adamant that this is not the last time you talk to him. you are not going to let him sit on that bench until the next time he's shipped off halfway across the world.

"which do you go to?" he asks after a pause.

"the one by the tailor's," you answer.

"i don't know...technically, i did just meet you. you might be out to kidnap me and force me into building a fountain." you roll your eyes, a smile tugging at your lips.

"i don't think you have anything better to be doing," again, reiner responds with another raised eyebrow, "accept the pretty girl's invitation to buy some bread with her, reiner."

reiner laughs. a real, actual laugh. and you know that you aren't going to regret the sudden burst of confidence when you get home.

"how do you know my name?" reiner asks through his smile, getting up as he dusts off his warrior uniform.

"doesn't everyone, reiner braun, warrior of marley, hero of liberio?"

"hero," he repeats after you, standing a little closer and once more gazing into the distance, "i don't know about that." you both slowly start walking back along the way you had originally come.

"how come?"

"i think heroes are supposed to be good people."

his honesty stuns you, but you try not to let your composure falter as you both make your way down the cobblestone path, maneuvering through the crowd that seems to finally be clearing away as the morning breaks into afternoon.

"well," you pause, trying to think of something that will mean anything to him. that will relax his brow a little, or soften out the stress on his face, "i don't think you're a hero." you can feel reiner freeze for a small minuscule moment, his face turning toward you.

"oh, really?" a small, teasing smirk makes its way across his face. he can't hide the confusion painted on his features. maybe he's not as taken aback or hurt or offended because you really are just a stranger. maybe's it's easier for him to be honest because you really are just a stranger. maybe he is speaking freely, with the knowledge he may never see you again, because you really are just a stranger. and, even though, deep down, a part of you wishes you were something more than a face he would eventually forget, you are grateful for the modicum of anonymity that somehow seems to evaporate an unspoken boundary between you.

"heroes die," you say, bluntly, "maybe i think there's more for you than that." and that was the truth, or as much of it as you could force yourself into saying. reiner stares at you blankly, his teasing demeanor fading away as he stops in his path. maybe you had said something wrong, or reminded him of something he wishes he could forget, but you are glad that in some weird, confusing way, you managed to express that he needed to live.

you had walked on for a few steps before realising he had stopped, and turn back to find reiner still staring at you. people walk between you and around you, but his gaze doesn't falter. his face is unreadable, but eventually, he is cut out of his moment of stillness and crosses the distance between you.

"that's a bit grim, but thanks, i guess?" he laughs, scratching at the back of his neck. you are a couple of steps ahead of him as you both turn the corner, getting closer to the bakery stall. you look back at him, watching as he strides on behind you, arms swaying by his sides and hair being lightly blown by the wind.

"you know," you start, stopping in your path again. reiner follows suit, waiting for you to continue, "that doesn't mean i don't think you're a good person."

reiner looks up at you. he doesn't look back down. you think you can feel yourself sinking into the ground.

"really?" he says, after a pause. you can hear the chatter of the bakery up ahead, the footsteps of more shoppers walking past you, the faint howling of the wind in your ears, the playful cries of children weaving through the hoards of people littered throughout the street. and you look at him. really look at him. you know, for sure, for definite, that you don't want to be just a stranger. you want him to remember your face and your words. you want him to think he deserves something more than desolation. so, you repeat.

"it doesn't mean i don't think you're a good person."

you take a few steps towards him and grab the sleeve of his jacket, gently tugging him towards you as you continue walking towards the bakery. you walk side by side, a little closer now. this time, the silence is comfortable, and when he looks down at you as you ready your basket to collect the bread of your choice, you're already looking up at him and offering a smile. as you grab the money out of your purse, you stare at reiner's hands which hang at his sides.

you don't want to be a stranger. you will see him again.

it doesn't mean i don't think you're a good person.

you hand the money to the vendor, thanking her and steadying your grip on the now filled basket. reiner silently tries to grab it from you, even though it weighs practically nothing, but you move your hand away, eyeing him threateningly.

you have nothing else to buy, but you keep walking. your hands brush accidentally on purpose (more so on purpose on your behalf.) reiner doesn't ask where else you need to go, he just keeps walking with you, and you are grateful. you grab a roll of bread from the basket and break off the end of it, dividing it into two and offering a piece to reiner. he takes it from your hand and offers you a smile. you want to see that smile again.

no, you want to see him smile because of you again.

it doesn't mean i don't think you're a good person.

it just means i want you to live.

[bangtanshomura]

PINK | 1/? | pjm

summary: A neighbor as pink and hopelessly romantic as you and an equally pink neighbor like Jimin (but without a thing or two in common), sounds almost perfect together, right?. The only problem? That you are madly in love with him but his tonalities are very different from yours.

pairing: park jimin x female reader.

genre: fluff, angst, (maybe in the future a little of smut? not so sure).

word count: 1139.

warning: unrequited love, pinning, so much embarrassment, a looooot of pink hehe, hurt, some mxm with ot7, you know...it happens sometimes.

Pink, it was love at first sight.

“Running late, neighbor?”

“It’s kind of my thing, you know?” You are in the middle of a battle with your keys, asking to all the god’s above, why the fuck you must make a clown of yourself in front of the most beautiful, smart, hot and cocky human being in planet earth? Aka the love of your life, aka the future father of your two children, aka Park Jimin.

“Oh, I do know” The little giggle that comes out of his mouth is enough to have you all flustrated. ”Any plans tonight? Are your friends coming over?” Jimin takes your purse from your hands and hangs it naturally on his shoulder following you in the hallway that leads to the elevator of your building.

“I like to think that they’re not, but that’s really ambitious from my part, right?” While you press the button that will take you to the lobby, Jimin shakes his head with an amused smile in his face.

“I think so, they’ll come no matter what you do. Talking about friends” He makes a pause looking at you and then to himself in the mirror that covers the wall of the up and down thing, styling his hair. “I was kind of wondering if you would like to come with me to The Taehyung Biggest Lifetime Event?”

Oh, boy. What a simple way to put your heart into a nearly colapse.

You’ll see “The Taehyung Biggest Lifetime Event” it's the name that your incredible mutual friend -Tae- put to his first art exhibition. And in fact, it is a big thing, an important memory if you think about all the photos that will be taken in the near future and obviously posted in social media, where everybody can see them and never erase them. And of course, because of the beautiful art that your dear friend creates.

But...the posibilities.

Jimin with a hand wrapped around your waist smiling to the camara with love in his eyes.

No, no, better.

Jimin with a hand wrapped around your waist smiling while looking at your face with adoration.

Oh, that one sounds so much better. It would be the kind of photo that would make girls run away from his Instagram. And with a bit of good luck, from his life too.

“Y/n? Are you there?”

“Uh? Yeah, yeah. I am” The devilish smirk Jimin gives you is proof enough for you that he knows or at least imagines what kind of thoughts crossed your mind.

You blush in a very embarrasing way and his smirks transforms into something more.

Sometimes luck it’s a good samaritan, because the moment he opens his mouth to say something, the sound of the elevator arriving to the lobby makes it’s appearance.

"Saved by the bell, pink angel" Jimin throws a wink to your way leaving you with a tomato red face and a beating heart threatening to burst out of your chest.

"Park Jimin, are you flirting with me?"

"You wish, baby!"

I do.

The beautiful sound of his bubbly laugh invades the lobby and you run to reach his side but he is faster than you, so your paceful morning routine with your eternal crush turns into a chase through the streets.

______

|Jiminie: How's work, pink?

|Y/n: As good as ever, you boring?

|Jiminie: You know I am, Yoongi doesn't get any funnier.

|Y/n: Hey!, I like Yoongi's dry sense of humor.

|Jiminie: You love to make me jealous, don't you?

You can't help the enamoured giggle that comes out of you.

Re-reading the last message, you inhale a preoccupying amount of air and text him back.

|Y/n: Sorry, sometimes I forget your prise kink.

|Jimin: Im worried about how this conversation turned around my kinks, but yeah, don't let yourself forget that I love to be loved ;)

Even if the message is suggestive, you let your shoulders drop in a defeating manner.

I wish it said by you.

I love to ve loved by you.

All these messages, the pet names, the flirting and the big amount of time that you spend together doesn't mean the same to Jimin as it does to you.

Ever since you two cross paths in the hallway of your building, you knew you were so fucked up.

You met Jimin two year ago.

Your best friend Namjoon was helping you taking your big and heavy boxes to your new departament in the third floor, between jokes about his boyfriend fighting with him for his tendency to break everything that comes across his way, when you saw the most beautiful thing that your twenty two years old eyes had ever seen.

It was like an angel with what it had to be the tightest pair of black jeans in the whole world and the fluffiest pink sweater ever.

"Oh" He stoped in his tracks and intercalate his curious gaze between Namjoon and you, apparently taking a chance for your tall friend. "New neighbor?"

Namjoon saw you out of the corner of his eye watching how your eyes went all big and sparkling by the sight of the boy.

So he smiled amusedly at the blonde haired angel in front of you.

"It's because of the pink mixer, right?" The little -most definitely taller than you- blonde boy, blushed so much that for a moment you thought smoke would come out of his ears. "Don't get me wrong, I do love that color as any sane person. But, unfortunately, im not the new addition to your building. It's this pretty little pink thing here".

"Pink, uh?" You were indeed a very, very pink and pretty thing. He scaned you from head to toe -from your pastel green crop top, to your baby pink cargo's and your also baby pink military boots- and conclude that, that innocence could be the death of him if he ever let you in.

"Y/n" You blurted out your name so fast that Namjoon almost choked trying to hold back his laughter. You give him a warning glare and returned your embarrased gaze to Jimin. "My name is y/n"

At that precise moment you experienced one of the most radical changes ever seen. The turn upwards his lips took, had sufficient evidence to be considered illegal. "Im Jimin, Park Jimin".

The sound of another incoming message took you out of your thoughts, forcing you to look around the flower shop to verify that there were no clients waiting patiently for your attention while you remembered the first meeting with which you are sure is the love of your life.

|Jiminie: Pink? Maybe you are a little busy, but guess who got another coffe for free today?

|Jiminie: That's right, baby, meee!. Should I invite a drink once and for all to the barista across the street?.

Or maybe not.

________

a/n:

Hey! My name is Alex and this is the first fic I have published on Tumblr or anywhere, ever. So, uhm , please be patient with me. English is not my mother language, so Im trying to do my best to write it correctly.Any questions, complaints or suggestions will be accepted (as long as it is in a respectful way. Im a crybaby please don’t be too harsh with me).

I hope you enjoy it and please tell me your opinion. I am planning to do it in two or three parts, I don't want this first fic to be so long so you don’t get bored.

Enjoy!^^

[karlajoyner]

Edge of Great (Luke Patterson x Reader)

A/n: Hey guys so this is my first imagine on tumblr. I know it’s pretty long but my fingers just kept typing.🙃 Definitely let me know if I should make shorter ones or longer ones or even a series! Also let me know if you guys have any requests or plots that I could write and for who! Finally finally let me know if you like it in a first reader POV or if i should try a third person POV! Oh and if I should post them in a book on wattpad or keep the content strictly on tumblr!!!😁 (Ps. I’ll most likely be adding a song to every chapter whether it goes with the chapter or not!) Check out my last post for more information on my writing.

Warnings: None

————

I sat in the studio along with my bandmates tuning my guitar. We were currently waiting on Julie to return from school so we could begin to practice for tonight. Her dad got us a gig playing for a couple of her friends to start a following. Which made a lot of sense when Julie explained it to me. Right after Luke sent me into a frenzie of confusion.

"Hey y/n/n you think you could help me with these lyrics for tonight?" Luke called from the couch. I stood up from my comfortable spot on the chair under the loft and flashed myself onto the spot right next to him.

"Sure Lukey" I said taking his writing journal in my own hands and sitting back to scan over the words.

Y/n- I believe, I believe that we're just one dream

I mumbled hearing Luke start to strum on his six string the melody of the song.

Away from who were mean to be that were standing on the edge of

Y/n, L- Something big something crazy our best days are yet unknown that this moment is ours to own

He joined in.

Y/n- Cause we're standing on the edge of great

L- (On the edge of great)

Y/n- Great

L- (On the edge of great)

Y/n- Great

L- (On the edge of great)

Y/n- Cause we're standing on the edge of

We sang to each other back and forth with smiles plastered on our faces.

Y/n, L- Shout shout. C'mon and let it out, out. C'mon and let it out, out. Don't gotta hide it. Let your colors blind their eyes. Be who you are no compromise. Just shout, shout. C'mon and let it out

We paused running out of lyrics. My mind racing searching for the next line.

Y/n- What doesn't kill you makes you feel alive

I sang softly as he leaned in closer with a smirk plastered on his face.

Y/n, L- Ooh-oh. I believe, I believe that we're just one dream. Away from who we're meant to be. That we're standing on the edge of great

We finished out of breath. My smile grew as Alex and Reggie began to clap.

"That was great"

"Yeah we’re gonna rock Julie's garage tonight" Reggie said making it sound less cool than it actually was.

"Definitely" Luke said standing up.

"Thanks for the help boss" He said sending me a smile.

"Anytime" I grinned before turning around to go take my previous seat to finish tuning my guitar.

"I'm gonna go find Julie and let her know we've got the song ready for tonight thanks to our amazing rhythm guitarist"

"Sounds like a plan" Alex said.

"Don't forget to mention how beautiful I am as well" I teased earning a smirk from Luke.

"I never do baby" He winked at me before disappearing. A small laugh escaped my lips before going back to my guitar.

"So" Alex said catching my attention.

"So?" I repeated looking up at the drummer boy.

"So you and Luke?"

"Me and Luke what?"

"You and Luke are like in love each other"

"We are not. Well I'm not. Can't say the same about pretty boy" I said teasingly.

"Yeah sure you're not. Reggie back me up here. Please tell your best friend that she's totally in love with Luke"

"You're totally in love Luke"

"I am not. Reggie your supposed to have my back"

"And I will. Once you admit you have a thing for Luke" He said smirking at me. I glared at the two boys in front of me who weren't as oblivious as I had thought they were.

"Okay so I have a thing for Luke. So what?"

"So you should tell him"

"Why on earth would I do that?"

"So he can admit he's in love with you too"

"And why would he do that when he's clearly not"

"Seriously? Didn't you see the way he was looking at you when you were singing? It looked like Reggie when he sees pizza"

"Pizza?" Reggie perked up excitedly. "There no pizza" Alex said a frown appearing on the bassist face.

"Just because looks at me a certain way does not mean he loves me"

"Really because last time I checked constantly touching each other means you like each other, constantly flirting means you like each other, and when was the last time you wore one of your own shirts" Alex said pointing at my outfit. I sunk back into my seat. He was right about everything down to one of the many shirts Luke had let me have.

"Come on y/n just admit it after we died something more changed with you two. We all see it. Even Reggie sees it and that's saying something"

"Yeah. So it's not like he's ever gonna say anything. So why should I put myself out there to possibly get rejected and heartbroken by my best friend? I mean how do we even know for sure if he's in love with me. Or even likes me for that matter?"

"We don't. Yet" Alex said smirking.

"Oh that's his thinking face. I haven't seen that since 94" Reggie said backing up slightly.

"I think we're in trouble"

It had been a couple hours after Julie had gotten out of school. Yet her or Luke were nowhere to be found. I groaned walking out of the bathroom in the back of the studio.

"Seriously Alex. This is your great idea"

"No my great idea is to have you and Reggie flirt like there's no tomorrow. This is just small details" He said fixing the fit of the flannel on my body. It was Reggie's lucky flannel that took a lot of convincing to get off his body.

"Okay but why'd I have to change my shirt" I said looking down at my own crop top that I hadn't worn in a very long time.

"Because it was Luke's. We need him to think that you don't need his clothes anymore"

"Why did I let you drag me into this?"

"Because deep down you want him to say something about it don't you?"

"Well yeah but-"

"Hey guys!" A familiar voice popped into the garage.

"Luke" I spoke pushing Alex away from me.

"Hey man what happened to practice?" Alex asked casually.

"Julie had some stuff to do after school so I went along. But she's on her way so we should get a few runs in-" His words slowly came to a halt sending me a strange look.

"Isn't that Reggies lucky flannel?"

"Uh yeah. He let me barrow it. For good luck. Here's your shirt back by the way. I don't think I'll need it anymore" I said trying to hand him back the shirt I was wearing previously.

"You know you don't have to give it back. It's yours" His lips simpered.

"I know but Reggie said if I needed to I could just barrow his"

"Oh" was all Luke before taking the shirt out of my hands.

Suddenly the garage door opened and in walked Julie.

"Hey guys" She smiled.

"Ready for tonight?"

"Definitely"

"Flynn's coming over before to help me get ready. Girl time?" Julie asked looking at me.

"I'll be there" I smiled.

"So are we ready to rehearse?"

"Where's Reggie?"

"He went out said he would be back in a bit"

As if on cue the other ghost popped in with a smile on his face.

"Luke" He said his eyes going wide.

"Your back"

"Yeah I am. Who are the flowers for?" Luke asked eyeing the bouquet of roses in his hand.

"They’re for y/n. You know she deserves the best" Reggie said nervously sticking his hand out for me.

"Thanks Reggie" I smiled lightly.

"She also deserves her favorite flowers. Sunflowers in case you were wondering"

"Luke" I scolded him taking the bouquet.

"I think it's a sweet gesture Reggie. Seriously thank you"

"Your welcome" He smiled pulling me into a light hug.

"I think we should rehearse before it gets any later" Alex suggested trying to ease the now very notable tension in the room.

"Sounds good" Julie said awkwardly stepping past Reggie and Luke who were standing a few feet apart. I looked at Alex who gave me a small nod.

"Uh Reggie can you come here for a sec I need your help" I said pulling him away to my guitar stand. I placed strap around my body waiting for the brunette to turn his attention to me.

"Uh sure. Cutie?" He spoke in a questionable tone before looking down at me.

"You need his help with guitar?" Luke asked clearly confused.

"Well yeah"

"But I always help you with guitar" "He offered earlier if I needed help to come to him"

"Yeah. I did that" Reggie said trying to act tough.

"Whatever" Luke scoffed.

I watched as he swung his guitar around his shoulder aggressively. I glanced at Julie who was sending me a confused look so I quickly shrugged my shoulder not knowing what else to do.

It was mere minutes before we were heading out to perform. The tension in the air was now overpowered by excitement.

"I'm so nervous" I said bouncing my leg up and down anxiously.

Suddenly I felt a hand land on it stopping my movements. I looked up to see Luke smiling down at me.

"Don't be nervous your gonna do amazing out there"

"Thanks" I smiled back.

"Yeah. Your always amazing. Did I mention you look beautiful tonight? Wearing my flannel. My lucky flannel" Reggie said with a pestering smile as he swung an arm around my shoulder.

"We get it. It's your flannel" Luke interrupted immediately removing his hand from my leg. I looked at Alex who was stifling a laugh.

"Uh thanks Reg. You look good too"

"Oh I know. And I'm gonna look better singing up there with you. It'll be like old times. You and me. And a microphone"

"You and me. And a microphone" Luke mimicked him. I almost laughed only to be startled by someone walking in.

"Hey guys are you ready?"

"Ready as we'll ever be" I spoke. Julie simply nodded her head walking out.

I stood up pacing around as I heard Julie begin the opening notes on the piano outside.

"Hey your gonna do great out there" Luke said stopping me from walking anymore.

"Thanks. You are too. You and Julie have great chemistry"

"Well yeah. But I think we have great chemistry too" He said taking my hands in his.

I finally looked into his eyes see him staring into mine in. A small smile forming on my face.

"Guys!" Alex called knocking us out of our trance. I panicked immediately flashing outside with Luke. Landing beside Reggie with my guitar at hand. Luke only a few feet away in his own place.

J- I believe

I believe that we're just one dream

Away from who we're meant to be

That we're standing on the edge of

Y/n- Something big, something crazy

Our best days are yet unknown

That this moment is ours to own

I joined in singing into Reggies microphone beaming with excitement. I scanned the crowd seeing smiles on people faces. This is all we ever wanted.

J- Cause we're standing on the edge of great

All- (On the edge of great)

J- Great

All- (On the edge of great)

J- Great

All- (On the edge of great)

J- 'Cause we're standing on the edge of great

L- We all make mistakes

But they're just stepping stones

To take us where we wanna go

It's never straight, no

Luke sang sending me a wink before continuing to sing with Julie.

L,J- Sometimes we gotta lean

Lean on someone else

To get a little help

I giggled as Reggie leaned on me. Back to back. Both of us playing our guitars to the same beat.

J- Until we find our way

I believe

I believe that we're just one dream

Away from who we're meant to be

That we're standing on the edge of

Y/n- Something big, something crazy

Our best days are yet unknown

That this moment is ours to own

J- Cause we're standing on the edge of great

All- (On the edge of great)

J- Great

All- (On the edge of great)

J- Great

All- (On the edge of great)

J- 'Cause we're standing on the edge of...

J- Shout, shout

C'mon and let it out, out

Don't gotta hide it

Let your colors blind their eyes

Be who you are no compromise

My heart rate picked up. The scene from earlier replaying in my head as Julie sang the next lines. Taking a chance I looked in Luke's direction to see him already looking at me with a grin on his face. I smirked walking over to the piano.

J- And Just shout, shout

C'mon and let it out, out

J, Y/n- What doesn't kill you makes you feel alive

Ooh-oh

J- I believe

Julie sang as Luke and I let off a similar guitar riff making me laugh.

I believe that we're just one dream

Away from who we're meant to be

That we're standing on the edge of great

Making my way over to Luke I let out a giggle as I pulled his beanie down slightly messing up his look. Before making my over back to Reggie. I looked back at the brunette to see him grinning from ear to ear.

All- Something big, something crazy

Our best days are yet unknown

That this moment is ours to own

Cause we're standing on the edge of great

(On the edge of great)

J- On the edge of great

All- (Great, on the edge of great) On the edge

All- (Great, on the edge of great)

J- 'Cause we're standing on the edge of...

L- Running from the past

Y/n- Tripping on the now

J- What is lost can be found

It's obvious

Luke, Julie, and I finished singing towards the audience.

Making eye contact with a few kids before flashing out myself back into the garage where Alex and Reggie were already waiting. Adrenaline coursing through our veins as another presence poofed into the room.

"That was amazing!" Luke shouted excitedly.

"I can't believe we just did that. Did you see how pumped they were?" I asked falling back onto the couch besides Reggie.

"Yeah. They loved us!" "Remind me to thank Julie for playing our CD later"

"Tonight it's her garage tomorrow it's- it's clubs, dances, and worldwide tours" Luke said eagerly. Taking the free spot to my left.

"God I wish we could feel like this all the time" I said leaning into Luke.

"Me too y/n/n" He said placing an arm around me. A sudden fake cough erupting from Alex's lips. I looked over to see him staring at me with a look.

"Oh uh- Reggie you were great out there" I complimented the boy sitting up.

"Thanks. You uh- you looked hot" He tried to sound cool but failed miserably.

"You think?"

"Oh yeah- I mean the sweat on your forehead and like the heat and-"

"What are you going on about?" Luke asked confusion plastering itself on his face.

"I think what he means is y/n is attractive. Right Reggie?" Alex asked.

"No, no don't answer for him. Reggie be straight with me do you like y/n or not?" Luke asked standing up.

"Why does it matter if I do or don't?" Reggie questioned standing up as well.

"Because you out of everyone know that I like her so why are you letting her wear your clothes, buying her flowers, and calling her hot. I thought I made it clear she was off limits" Luke said my mouth widening in shock.

"I'm off limits?" I asked looking at him.

"How many people did you make it clear to that I was off limits?" I asked not really wanting an answer I was expecting.

"A few"

"A few? Micheal Brookes?" I asked remembering a guy I began to talk to at the beginning of our senior year who randomly stopped talking to me one day. I watched as his head dipped in a short nod.

"Jacob Miller?" I continued watching his nod once again.

"Grant Dean?" Nod.

"Nick Harper?" Nod.

"Derek Johnson?" Nod.

"Seriously Luke? Your the reason I never had a boyfriend my senior year. To make it worse I died a virgin. You asshole" I shouted standing up. I was fuming at this point. He had no right. And he still did it. My head whipped towards the garage door heading it creak open.

"Hey guys" Julie and Flynn smiled walking it.

"You guys did great out there" Flynn said happily. Julie immediately noticing the tension in the room and the frown upon my lips.

"Are you okay y/n?"

"I don't know why don't you ask Luke?" I spoke before flashing out.

I landed in the only place I could think of. A single tear escaped my eye as I sat on the marquee of the Orpheum. Our dream. His dream. I stared out onto the lit up street of Sunset Boulevard. If he didn't want me seeing anyone he could've said something. For the longest time I wondered why guys were such assholes. It wasn't them. It was Luke. It was always Luke.

"I know your mad" I heard his voice speak from behind me.

"I think I'm beyond mad Luke. How could you?" I asked standing up and turning towards him.

"I came crying to you all those times wondering why guys didn't want me. And-and you made me think that it was all me when it was really you. Telling them to back off. Why? Why would you do this to me?"

"Because-" He was at a loss for words. Looking like a kicked puppy.

"I-I wanted you" He finally spoke up.

"You what?"

"I wanted you" He spoke more confidently.

"I wanted you to myself. I- I every time you came and told me you were talking to someone new it hurt because I know it should've been me who asked you out. Who got the courage to just tell you that I-" He went silent the anger in me evaporating in a matter of seconds.

"That you what?" I asked quietly.

"That I love you. I know I'm late but I can't hold it in anymore. After seeing you and Reggie today I got jealous just like I used to back in high school. I know this'll probably ruin our friendship but I don't want to lose you so I really need you to say something right now before I go insane not hearing your beautiful voice" He finished off finally looking at me. The look in his eyes was as hurt. And I wanted to be mad. But I couldn't be. Not when he just admitted what I had been wanting to hear for so long.

"Your 25 years late. But I think we have an eternity to make up for that" I said his eyebrows flying up in surprise.

"Really?"

"You really think I wanted to wear my own shirt today Patterson? Alex told me that if I kept wearing your clothes I'd only fall deeper in love you" I spoke a smile reaching both our face.

He quickly made his way towards me. Leaning forward until his lips attached themselves onto mine. I giggled as he lifted me in his arms holding me close. Our lips molding perfectly like they were made for each other.

"This isn't real" He whispered putting me down.

"Your mine. God your mine" He mumbled pressing open mouth kisses down my neck before connecting his lips back to mine.

"It's definitely real Lukey"

"I love it when you call me that" He mumbled into my lips.

"Don't get all soft on me now Patterson" I laughed pulling away.

"I'm sorry for what I did before I really am. For making you upset and I'm gonna spend an eternity making it up to you"

"It's okay Luke. It's in the past now. I just would've preferred if you would've not scared away every guy that tried to talk to me"

"I promise I'll never hurt you like that again" He said holding me close by the waist. As I began to suck on his neck to begin leaving a hickey.

"And I promise you won't be a virgin for much longer" He whispered reattaching our lips again.

[bigfrozenfan-fanfics]

Chapter 07 - Mattias and Halima

Links: Chapter overview, Character list, Map, Glossar Rating: M over all Publishing cycle: each Friday on (link)

Remarks: all my chapters contain carefully selected music tracks. It’s your own decision if you want to use them or not while reading. The purpose is to musically support the respective mood of the plot. If you can please use a browser for reading (not the Tumblr app) due to the text formatting.

It was just before sunset when they reached Arendelle. Mattias' timing had been correct. They rode right through the upper rock gate and all the splendour of their homeland opened before them. When they left two days ago they still had the journey ahead of them and did not look back. But now they had Arendelle in front of them and the view from up here was overwhelming. The fields on the mountain slopes glowed in intense colours, from the gold of the wheat, through rich green and yellow of different crops for humans and animals, to a bright mixture of colours from the many fields of flowers used for decoration and for sale in shops and at the market. In the harbour the ships and boats rocked in the soft, warm breeze and behind the majestic castle of the royal family, bathed in the orange light of the setting sun, the calm waters of the Arenfjord glittered.

Mattias could not tear himself away from the sight and gently brought his horse to a halt. Halima did the same and looked over to him. He had a dreamy expression on his face and she had to smile. She could understand his feelings, as harvest time was approaching and his homeland showed itself to him in all its beauty and fertility. She was looking forward to the harvest festival. This time they would celebrate it together.

Finally they rode up slowly and they heard the bell at the clock tower in the distance strike seven times. On the way down they passed Halima's cozy little cottage and they reined the horses. Mattias jumped boldly out of the saddle and walked around the horse to help Halima get off.

“Mattias! You jump off your horse as if you were still the lieutenant from back then. Remember that you are not young anymore. You could easily sprain your ankle,” she said laughing and shook her head over his exuberance.

He grinned and helped her dismount. “Don't worry, dearest, I'm not that old.” They held each other in their arms and looked at one another in love. Time seemed to stand still for a moment. Then he kissed her tenderly and she lifted one foot in rapture.

When they separated again he gave her a last short kiss on her cheek as a farewell. “I have to ride to the castle now to take care of everything before nightfall. I will see you later. I'll pick you up for dinner.”

“All right, darling. I'll just go down to the library and drop off some books. I'd forgotten to bring them back before we left. I hope it's still open. I'll see you later.”

He got back on his horse, put the other one on a leash and waved to her as he rode off. She waved back and gazed after him till he vanished behind the next corner of the houses. Then she went inside to get the books.

~~~

As he had passed through the castle gate, he handed the horses over to a stable boy who was just passing by, and was about to go through the front door of the castle when the captain of the guard approached him.

“General Mattias. May I have a word, please?” He saluted him and Mattias nodded.

“What's it, Captain Einar?”

“Well, I ... am a little confused. I see you, but where are the queen and her fiancé? Has something happened?” His gaze showed a mixture of amazement and concern, but Mattias also noticed a slight hint of anger on his face.

“You have nothing to worry about. She is well and she is still with her sister, Elsa. She'll be back in two days.”

“With all due respect, Sir, but you left without any protection from her guards and now you're returning alone? That's-“

“Irresponsible, you mean?” Mattias gruffly interrupted the young, overzealous captain of the royal guard. But he looked at him favorably. “She is in the best of hands with Elsa, no bodyguard in the world could protect her better than she. Have you forgotten what she did last autumn to save us all from the flood? Well ...?” He looked at him, waiting.

The captain became a little pale around the nose and stuttered, unsure what to answer, “Um ... yes, well ... in that sense, of course, you're right, Sir, I just thought I ... I mean ...”

“That's all right, Captain Einar. You're just doing your duty and being very observant, that's fine. Keep up the good work. But if you'll excuse me now, I have important business to attend to.” Mattias turned and left the captain stood speechless.

~~~

Of course, it had only been half the truth and he had to lie partly; Mattias thought, but in this situation it was necessary not to tell the captain everything.

In the following hour he called together some of the older councillors who were still faithfully carrying out their duties in Queen Elsa's time and informed them of the precarious situation. He instructed everyone to keep it under wraps and to treat the matter as confidential. Everyone agreed without reservation. On most faces there was great concern and some asked about the condition of their Queen Anna. He answered their questions in concise words, but made it clear to them that a lengthy discussion would have to wait until their return.

He then went to the royal physician and asked him to prepare everything necessary and to look for answers for Elsa's condition. He did not need to tell a doctor about his duty of confidentiality. The physician nodded and hurried away to look for precedents in his textbooks.

Finally, only one thing remained to be done. He had to find two reliable people to accompany him and he already knew who.

When he stepped outside again it had already become dark and the courtyard was bathed in the flickering light of the fire bowls and some big torches. He had fresh horses brought and rode to his home. However, on the way he stopped briefly to visit two of his old comrades who were locked up with him in the Enchanted Forest. He could trust them absolutely. Among them was a woman who was supposed to take care of suitable camouflage clothes for Elsa. He gave the man the order to get an inconspicuous wagon, some ranged weapons, food and everything else for such an action. Both of them did not ask any questions and immediately took care of this responsible task, with the intention not to arouse any suspicion.

Arriving at home, he threw on fresh clothes suitable for a dinner. After his return last autumn he had to take care of a completely new wardrobe, because he simply did not fit into the old clothes anymore. He always took care of a tidy appearance, especially now, because of Halima. He took one last look in the mirror before leaving the house again.

~~~

The host cleared away the leftovers of their dinner while they leaned back contentedly. He enquired how it had tasted to them.

“That was delicious,” enthused Halima, smiling at the host and wiped the corner of her mouth with the tip of a napkin. “Compliments to the cook,” she added as he left. Her eyes lit up at Mattias, who rubbed his belly with satiation.

“I must have overdone it a bit with the portion,” he giggled and reached for his glass of red wine. “To your health, Halima.”

“To us, Mattias,” she said as she lifted her glass, toasting with him, while they looked each other in the eyes.

A short time later, they went for their walk, as previously planned. It was a starry night and Arenfjord glittered silvery in the bright moonlight. Down in the village all the lanterns were lit and from up here you could see that the taverns were very busy, now and then even the laughter of some guests came up here.

“How did it go at the castle?” Halima asked abruptly.

“Good. Everything is arranged and prepared. All is according to plan.”

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

“Before sunrise. On the one hand, we gain some time, because of the vehicle and on the other hand, there is hardly anyone on the streets and we will probably come out unnoticed.” He paused. “How was it with you? Was the library still open?”

“Yes, barely. Mr. Oddvar was just about to close, but I was able to return the books.”

They sat down in the grass and Mattias put an arm around her. Halima looked at him and then rested her head on his shoulder. They both remained silent and enjoyed their romantic evening on the hill above Arendelle for a long time.

~~~

Kristoff had woken up in the middle of the night because Anna was snoring loudly. It was still dark so he closed his eyes again. How would it be once they were married and he would have to sleep in their bed from now on; he thought. Then he grinned. He hadn't known that about Anna yet.

He recalled last night before his inner eyes. They had talked for a long time about what Anna had seen, and he had tried to convince her that what she had observed did not necessarily have to be true. Perhaps this impression was troubling. At some point she had calmed down again and he went out to get them both a warm dinner, which they then consumed silently inside the hut.

Afterwards she had prepared herself for the night while he turned his back on her for decency. She did not want to sleep alone and asked him to lie beside her. Inside the kota it was quite warm and so he asked if she would mind if he took off his thick leather tunic. She grinned at him and shook her head. It hadn't taken long then and she snuggled up comfortably against him. Through her thin nightdress he felt her warmth on his naked upper body, his hand lay light and tenderly above her waist. He enjoyed feeling her closeness in this way. Her slender, warm body seemed so fragile at this moment, but he knew that it was not so. If she wanted to, she could unleash an unimagined strength, not to mention her willpower and her sometimes almost unbearable pig-headedness. But at the moment all he felt was her softness and warm breath on his chest, her gentle hand on his back and her hair tickling his cheek. Sometimes she hummed softly and contentedly when she moved.

Finally her breath became more regular and she fell asleep. This night could last forever if he had his way; he thought, if only there wasn't this little thing that she snores such like she does now. But at some point he got so tired that it didn't bother him anymore and he fell back asleep with a broad smile on his face.

~~~

It was already after midnight when Honeymaren stepped out of Elsa's kota and almost silently closed the flap behind her. Elsa had fallen asleep at some point and she didn't want to wake her up.

She looked up and watched the twinkling stars in the cloudless night sky. The moon had already set and so she was now standing there in deep black darkness. “Crap,” she whispered softly to herself and turned towards her own kota by feeling. She knew that she would also find the way blindly and it was not far away. Nevertheless, she moved forward very carefully, one arm stretched out in front of her, to notice trees or a hut in time.

She finally reached the kota and listened. An unmistakable snoring told her that she was standing in front of the right hut. Her parents had certainly wondered where she was again, but it was extremely rare that she was so late. Silently she opened the flap and crept in. She groped her way to her sleeping place, unbuckled her belt and pulled the tunic over her head. Then she lay down, sighed quietly and soon fell into sleep like a rock.

~~~

At sunrise Yelana left the camp and made a long walk to a kota far away. She hadn't been here for a long time and when she finally stood in front of the hut, it immediately struck her that it had seen better days before. The wood was heavily weathered and there were open gaps between the boards in some places. Nobody had repaired or renewed anything here for a long time. She opened the flap and stepped in. In the middle of the kota sat an elderly woman who was busy with a handicraft.

“Hello, Gyda.”

“Don't call me that, Yelana. You know very well I hate that nickname.” She did not even look up when she answered in a dark and powerful voice, but continued to care for her traditional duodji. She just made one of the belts as they all wore it over the tunic here in camp. However, certain details onto it told Yelana that this belt was meant for an unmarried Northuldra.

“Well, Gyríðr, but don't you think we're both a bit old for this kind of subtlety?”

Gyda looked up briefly, swung her head back and forth in a judgmental manner and then continued with the work indifferent. Yelana took a look around the dwelling. It was full of old traditional items, including a richly decorated rare gievriej, a very old sacred shaman drum, as the noaidi used to use it for their rituals. This was long before the People of the Sun moved here near by Ahtohallan and the fifth Spirit was chosen among them. All that remained of the old tradition was the soul song of her tribe. But this one here must have been made by Gyda.

Yelana looked at her again. She had become a very old woman, the deep wrinkles in her face showed her long life experience as wife of the fifth spirit. But it was also evident that she was still troubled by the fact that he had rejected her at that time and that she was losing her high position in the tribe on those days. At some point she retreated to this place and since then she had lived as a hermit. Afterwards she only had contact to the tribe through the few Northuldra that brought her food to survive. In return, she voluntarily made traditional clothing and therefore was provided with leather, fabric and all the other things that were necessary.

Yelana didn't know everything that was going on that time then, but she needed to know if Gyda had a child with him and could somehow hide it. She cleared her throat distinctly. “There have been disturbing events and I have an important inquiry.”

Gyda didn't respond.

“Please!”

The elder woman paused and finally put her tools aside.

“Ask.”

“Had the fifth spirit begotten a progeny with you?”

Gyda gave a short, dry laugh. “Are you out of your mind? Have you forgotten what happened back then?”

Yelana tightened her eyebrows. “No, of course not. But you've been living so far out here for so long that nobody notices anything, even if you're pregnant, if you know how to hide it. I need to know, and also who helped you.”

“Even if it were, what do you care?” Gyda picked up her tools again.

“Wait. Please listen to me.” Yelana sat down and told her everything, including her suspicion that Gyda's child might be responsible. Gyda listened to her attentively and asked no questions, only her gaze grew increasingly darkened. At the end she nodded and after a little while of consideration she finally answered quietly.

“Yes, I had a child with him, a boy. I gave him the name Kolgrimr.” She hesitated, but then continued, “I was already pregnant when he abandoned me because I was no longer good enough for him and could no longer perform my duties as he expected of me to. You surely remember what he was like, how ruthless and pressing. But I wanted to protect my unborn child.” She interrupted herself and took a deep breath. “I gave birth to the child some time later and Jonna helped me with. Then this king came from the south and all these strangers started to build this dam and ...,” she faltered and looked sadly to the ground. “Sometime after the completion of this stony monster, he finally came back to me and told me something about a fraud and that the land was dying and the reindeer were suffering. He was so excited and angry, I can still remember it like it was yesterday.”

“What happened next?” asked Yelana when Gyda lost herself in memories and did not continue speaking immediately.

“He took Kolgrimr from me. Said he had to make sure that his descendant would take over when he himself was no longer around. I didn't know what he meant then and I tried to stop him, but without success. I never saw him again and later heard that he was killed in his human form. Shortly afterwards the sun darkened and this fog came. You know the rest of the story.”

“Yes, and Jonna also died fighting with the men of this dreadful king. I knew her quite well. I just don't understand why she never told me about it.”

“Because she had to promise to me not to tell anybody.”

Yelana understood and nodded. She felt pity for her, grabbed Gyda by the arm and said, “I'm very sorry for you, Gy- ... Gyríðr. No one knew about your child, and none of us wanted you living here alone. None of us ever really got it right.”

“It's not our folks' fault, I know. It was my own decision and I had my reasons.”

“Have you ever seen your son again?”

Gyda looked up. Then she slowly and sadly shook her head, “No. He's probably long dead, too.”

When Yelana later returned to the camp, she first went to her kota and thought things over thoroughly. One thing led to another and slowly a picture formed itself in her mind. It was time to make a decision, one that was very tough for her. And so she got up and walked out.

~~~

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