#sorry for the quality i had to take a screenshot of a gif

[1pepsiboy]

Car video with Matt Sturniolo - Fluff! (request)

Matt Sturniolo x reader!

Word count: 1.1K

Warnings: swearing, a little kissing

A/N: This one got away from me and I had to reign it back in because it's not supposed to be smutty lmaooo But here it is!

***

It’s close to midnight as Matt parks the van in a random spot at the favorite lot. The two of you got fries, chicken nuggets with sweet n’ sour sauce (mostly for him), and a large milkshake to share. You plan to do a car video to post on his individual channel.

You have no idea what you were going to talk about. Matt had fans submit their own questions for you two to answer.

After setting up the camera, which included Matt going out to check it, you start recording and picking at the food.

Matt starts the video off. "Hey everyone, (y/n) and I are here. Uhm... basically we're going to do our own car video without Nick and Chris. We don't really have a topic, but you guys submitted questions on instagram. Babe, have anything to start us off?"

Now, he looks at you as you’re mid fry. You chew quickly as possible, wiping your hands on a napkin, as he giggles under his breath.

"Thanks for the warning," you remark with a laugh. "Uhm, not really... I'm just here for the vibes."

"For the vibes?" Matt crooks a brow and looks you up and down. Then he takes a nugget and dips in the sauce.

You roll your eyes. "Don't yuck my yum."

Matt stuffs the nugget in his mouth. "Okay, Chris."

All you do is flip him off and take a sip of the milkshake.

"Just ask the questions."

"Okay, okay." He laughs as he readjusts in his seat after grabbing his phone. It's quiet for a couple minutes while he gathers them. "Oh, let's start with this one. What's our favorite thing about each other?"

"Well-"

"Oh, quick disclaimer, sorry babe." Matt shoots you a nervous smile. "I will edit screenshots of the questions onto the screen so you can see who they're from. And uh.. if you'd like to get featured in videos, follow us on instagram to see the next time I ask for questions. I'll put the @s on the screen and in the description below."

You slowly chew on your straw after taking another sip, patiently waiting for him to be done. It's already been fifteen minutes and you are almost positive Matt forgot the extra battery pack. Granted, you could've asked Nick where it was and brought it; too late.

"Okay, what were you going to say?" Matt prompts.

You think about making another snarky remark in how it'd been so long since he asked the question that you don't remember it.

Tapping the straw on your pursed lips, you pretend to think. "Well... I have many favorite things so it's an unfair question."

Matt lightly rolls his eyes. "Look, I know you love everything about me, but what's your favorite?"

"Oh, everything?" You laugh. "You think so highly of yourself, don't you, Matty B? Let's go the different route then." You look directly into the camera. "Guys, this kid will not accept anything sort of unorganized or clean. Not for more than five minutes if he can help it."

Matt's jaw drops and he snatches the cup out of your hand. "Your least favorite thing is how organized I am?"

"Yeah, live a little! You won't die if there's like a wrapper or two on your desk, or if the toothbrush isn't in the holder."

"You are an absolute monster, (y/n)!" Matt cracks. He points between you and the camera. "Don't believe a single word she says. She leaves more than a wrapper or two, and her skincare is all over my bathroom counter after she does her morning routine."

You shrug. "I don't see a problem with that, and I don't think the fans will either."

"Guys, leave a comment if you're more like me or (y/n)." He barely scoffs under his breath, eating another fry. "You're lucky you have other amazing qualities that I overlook the messiness."

Now, you couldn't help blushing. “Such as?���

Matt shakes his head, a smile spreading on his lips. “You’re understanding about a lot going on, you know, like the channels, life, and stuff. So it’s easy to talk to you about it, like if I’m ever anxious or something.”

“Top fucking notch quality right there,” you say. “Anything else? I love the praise.”

“I thought this was reserved for in private, babe.”

Your eyes go wide and you almost spit out the fry you just put in your mouth. “Matthew! Stop!”

Matt giggles under his breath. “Sorry. Uhm… You can rock a men’s polo and make the best playlists for me… Obviously you have such a vibrant personality.” 

“That I do.” You nod in agreement. You reach out to brush back some of his hair, causing some pinkness to rouge on his cheeks. “I love how cautious you are about decisions, keeps me from letting impulsive thoughts win.”

“Which is a lot,” he shoots a look at the camera.

You can only roll your eyes in response. “Anyway… You’re the most caring person I know that will drop anything to help someone you love. The only time you won’t ask a lot of questions… Oh! You’re actually the best big spoon ever.”

He bites his bottom lip, failing to hold back a cheesy grin. “Really, babe?”

“Absolutely.” 

You close the space between you, and Matt instinctively rests his hand in the crook of your neck. You crawl over the center console onto his lap when you realize it wouldn’t be just a few kisses.

Time gets away and you sort of forget that you are filming. Your hands roam each other’s bodies over and under clothes. Both of you leave butterfly kisses on the other’s neck.

The lights in the van suddenly dim away.

“Shit. Fuck,” Matt says, his lips pink from yours and hair tousled more than usual. “I think the camera died.”

“And we technically only answered one question.” You bite your lip with a laugh. 

He laughs with you, running a hand through his hair. He lays back and looks you in the eyes. “I should’ve known not to start with that question.”

“Should we try doing this again on a different night?”

Matt sighs heavily. “Probably… It would suck to scrap all the footage though.”

A smirk rises on your lips as you move back to the passenger seat. “You want to include clips of us making out?”

“Obviously no.” He rolls his eyes. 

“Let’s just keep going then. Use my phone to record.”

Matt kisses the crook of your neck. “You’re the best, babe.”

You shoot him a look. “Be careful, Matthew.”

“Sorry, sorry.” He throws his hands up in defense. (He really wasn’t that sorry.)

*You can request others from this list or send me new ones!*

[damienns]

My GIF Making process: Screen capturing using MPV player, Organizing files, 3 Sharpening settings, Basic Coloring PSD + Actions set

This is a very long post so heads up.

I’ll try to be as thorough and true as much as possible to the way I make my gifs (I already use Photoshop Actions which I’ve long since set up but now for this tutorial I’m reviewing them to show you the exact steps I’ve learned to create my gifs 😃) and present them to you in a semi-coherent way. Also, please bear with me since English is my second language.

First things first. Below are the things and tools we need to do this:

Downloaded 4K or 1080p quality videos (let’s all assume we know where to get these—especially for high definition movies and tv series—so this post doesn’t get removed, okay? 😛)

Adobe Photoshop CC or the CS versions can work as well, but full disclosure I haven’t created gifs using the CS versions since 2020. I’m currently using Adobe Photoshop 2024.

mpv player. Use mpv player to get those frames/screenshots or any other video player that has a screen grabber feature. I’ve used adapter for the longest time but I’ve switched to mpv because the press to screenshot feature while the video is playing has been a game changer not to mention ultimate time saver for me. For adapter you need to play it in another video player (like VLC player), to get the start and end timestamps of the scene you want to gif which takes me ages before I can even open Photoshop.

Anyway! Please stop reading this post for a moment and head over to this amazing tutorial by kylos. She perfectly tells you how to install and use mpv player, both for Mac and Windows users.

One thing I have to share though, I had a tough time when I updated my MacOS to Sonoma since MPV is suddenly either duplicating frames or when I delete the duplicates the player seems to be skipping frames :/ I searched and found a solution here, though it didn’t work for me lol. My workaround for this in the meantime is decreasing the speed down to 0.70 then start screenshotting—it’s not the same pre Sonoma update but it works so I’ll have to accept it rather than have jumpy looking gifs.

Now, after this part of kylos’ tutorial:

you can continue reading the following sections of my gif tutorial below.

I want to share this little tip (sorry, this will only cater to Mac users) that I hope will be helpful for organizing the screenshots that MPV saved to the folder you have selected. Because believe me you don’t want to go through 1k+ of screenshots to select just 42-50 frames for your gif.

The Control + Command + N shortcut

This shortcut allows you to create a new folder from files you have pre-selected. As you can see below I have already created a couple of folders, and inside each folder I have selected screenshots that I want to include in one single gif. It's up to you how you want to divide yours, assuming you intend to create and post a Tumblr gifset rather than just one gif.

Another tip is making use of tags. Most of, if not all the time, I make supercorp gifs so I tag blue for Kara and red (or green) for Lena—just being ridiculously on brand and all that.

Before we finally open Photoshop, there's one more thing I want to say—I know, please bear with me for the third? fourth? time 😅

It's helpful to organize everything into their respective folders so you know the total number of items/frames you have. This way, you can add or delete excess or unnecessary shots before uploading them in Photoshop.

For example below there are 80 screenshots of Kara inside this folder and for a 1:1 (540 x 540 px) Tumblr gif, Photoshop can just work around with 42-50 max number of frames with color adjustments applied before it exceeds the 10 MB file size limit of Tumblr.

Sometimes I skip this step because it can be exhausting (haha) and include everything so I can decide visually which frames to keep later on. You'll understand what I mean later on. But it's important to keep the Tumblr 10 MB file size limit in mind. Fewer frames, or just the right amount of frames, is better.

So, with the screenshot organization out of the way, let's finally head over to Photoshop.

Giffing in Photoshop, yay!

Let’s begin by navigating to File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack…

The Load Layers window will appear. Click the Browse button next.

Find your chosen screenshots folder, press Command + A to select all files from that folder then click Open. Then click OK.

After importing and stacking your files, Photoshop should display the following view:

By the way, I'll be providing the clip I've used in this tutorial so if want to use them to follow along be my guest :)

If you haven't already opened your Timeline panel, navigate to Windows > Timeline.

Now, let's focus on the Timeline panel for the next couple of steps.

Click Create Video Timeline, then you’ll have this:

Now click the menu icon on the top right corner then go to Convert Frames > Make Frames from Clips

Still working on the Timeline panel, click the bottom left icon this time—the icon with the three tiny boxes—to Convert to Frame Animation

Select Make Frames From Layers from the top right corner menu button.

So now you have this:

Go and click the top right menu icon again to Select All Frames

Then click the small dropdown icon to set another value for Frame Delay. Select Other…

The best for me and for most is 0.05 but you can always play around and see what you think works for you.

Click the top right menu icon again to Reverse Frames.

I think Photoshop has long since fixed this issue but usually the first animation frame is empty so I just delete it but now going through all these steps there seems to be none of that but anyways, the delete icon is the last one among the line of feature buttons at the bottom part of the Timeline panel.

Yay, now we can have our first proper GIF preview of a thirsty Lena 😜

Press spacebar to watch your gif play for the very first time! After an hour and half of selecting and cutting off screenshots! 😛 Play it some more. No really, I’m serious. I do this so even as early (lol) as this part in the gif making process, I can see which frames I can/should delete to be within the 10 MB file size limit. You can also do it at the end of course 🙂

Now, let’s go to the next important steps of this tutorial post which I’ve numbered below.

Crop and resize to meet Tumblr's required dimensions. The width value should be either 540px, 268px, or 177px.

Convert the gif to a Smart Object for sharpening.

Apply lighting and basic color adjustments before the heavy coloring. I will be sharing the base adjustments layers I use for my gifs 😃.

1. Crop and Resize

Click on the Crop tool (shortcut: the C key)

I like my GIFs big so I always set this to 1:1 ratio if the scene allows it. Press the Enter key after selecting the area of the frame that you want to keep.

Side note: If you find that after cropping, you want to adjust the image to the left or another direction, simply unselect the Delete Cropped Pixels option. This way, you will still have the whole frame area available to crop again as needed and as you prefer.

Now we need to resize our gif and the shortcut for that is Command + Opt + I. Type in 540 as the width measurement, then the height will automatically change to follow the ratio you’ve set while cropping.

540 x 540 px for 1:1

540 x 405 px for 4:3

540 x 304 px for 16:9

For the Resample value I prefer Bilinear—but you can always select the other options to see what you like best.

Click OK. Then Command + 0 and Command + - to properly view the those 540 pixels.

Now we get to the exciting part :) the sharpen settings!

2. Sharpen

First we need to have all these layers “compressed” intro a single smart object from which we can apply filters to.

Select this little button on the the bottom left corner of the Timeline panel.

Select > All Layers

Then go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters

Just click OK when a pop-up shows up.

Now you should have this view on the Layers panel:

Now I have 3 sharpen settings to share but I’ll have download links to the Action packs at the end of this long ass tutorial so if you want to skip ahead, feel free to do so.

Sharpen v1

Go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen…

Below are my settings. I don’t adjust anything under Shadows/Highlights.

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.4

Click OK then do another Smart Sharpen but this time with the below adjustments.

Amount: 12

Radius: 10.0

As you can see Lena’s beautiful eyes are “popping out” now with these filters applied. Click OK.

Now we need to Convert to Frame Animation. Follow the steps below.

Click on the menu icon at the top right corner of the Timeline panel, then click Convert Frames > Flatten Frames into Clips

Then Convert Frames > Convert to Frame Animation

One more click to Make Frames From Layers

Delete the first frame then Select All then Set Frame Delay to 0.05

and there you have it! Play your GIF and make sure it’s just around 42-50 frames. This is the time to select and delete.

To preview and save your GIF go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)…

Below are my Export settings. Make sure to have the file size around 9.2 MB to 9.4 MB max and not exactly 10 MB.

This time I got away with 55 frames but this is because I haven’t applied lighting and color adjustments yet and not to mention the smart sharpen settings aren't to heavy so let’s take that into consideration.

Sharpen v1 preview:

Sharpen v2

Go back to this part of the tutorial and apply the v2 settings.

Smart Sharpen 1:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.3

Smart Sharpen 2:

Amount: 20

Radius: 0.5

We’re adding a new type of Filter which is Reduce Noise (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise...) with the below settings.

Then one last Smart Sharpen:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.3

Your Layers panel should look like this:

Then do the Convert to Frames Animation section again and see below preview.

Sharpen v2 preview:

Sharpen v3:

Smart Sharpen 1:

Amount: 500

Radius: 0.4

Smart Sharpen 2:

Amount: 12

Radius: 10.0

Reduce Noise:

Strength: 5

Preserve Details: 50%

Reduce Color Noise: 0%

Sharpen Details: 50%

Sharpen v3 preview:

And here they are next to each other with coloring applied:

v1

v2

v3

Congratulations, you've made it to the end of the post 😂

As promised, here is the download link to all the files I used in this tutorial which include:

supercorp 2.05 Crossfire clip

3 PSD files with sharpen settings and basic coloring PSD

Actions set

As always, if you're feeling generous here's my Ko-fi link :) Thank you guys and I hope this tutorial will help you and make you love gif making.

P.S. In the next post I'll be sharing more references I found helpful especially with coloring. I just have to search and gather them all.

-Jill

[g0ry0re0]

"Valentine", Mike Schmidt (Five Nights At Freddy's, 2023, Film) - Imagine

Description: You and Mike take the day off for Valentine's Day, spending quality time with one another. / Mike Schmidt x GN!Reader

General Notes: Established Relationship (reader lives with Mike and Abby), Gender Neutral Reader (no use of Y/N), Pure Fluff, Second Person POV, Takes Place After The Film's Events (no mention of movie plot, mostly just mentioned for the character and relationship development), Set In The Movie Year (2000), Brief Scene With Abby In The Beginning, Lots Of Physical Touch

Author's Note: The song choice is soooo not original lol, but I love Laufey and had to do something really cute for Valentine's Day (song is linked at the bottom of the post). This was also heavily inspired by a tweet from @/whycraves on twitter (screenshot at bottom of post). Also, my best friend, @anal-spaghetti-monster (I'm sorry lol) helped me choose the gif for Mike! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The morning before posting this, I read @sleepyhutcherson's Mike Schmidt Valentine's Day prompt and noticed a lot of similarities. I just want to throw it out there that this is purely a coincidence and that I reached out to her to confirm that posting this was still okay. Besides that, check out her work as well, as she did an amazing job with a similar prompt!

Word Count: 1,693 Words

"Alright, Abbs, you got everything?" Mike turns around in the car seat to face her.

Your car is temporarily parked by the elementary school curb with a handful of others, you're sitting in the driver's seat and looking back and forth between your boyfriend and his younger sister. This was one of the rare days you and Mike could drop her off at school together, as you had both taken the day off work. The three of you spent an easy-going morning together, not as hectic as it usually is when trying to get ready as fast as possible for work and school. Mike in particular had woken up early and made a small breakfast for you and Abby. He woke you up with coffee and Abby with the promise of bacon, causing you both to rise quickly out of your beds and immediately join him in the kitchen. The time was spent enjoying each other's company and getting ready leisurely before heading out the door.

Abby rolls her eyes playfully and smiles. "Yes, Mike."

You smile as well and add, "Sounds like something you should've asked before we even got in the car. Definitely not when we're already at school."

It's Mike's turn to roll his eyes, but he quickly looks back at Abby.

"And you have your...love- heart candy letter things for your friends?"

"They're Valentine's Day cards, Mike! And, yes," she shakes a pink and red decorated, emptied-out, tissue box filled with cards and candy. "I have them right here."

Before Mike can even think about a response, Abby opens the car door excitedly and jumps out, shouting her goodbyes while running to the school entrance. Mike tries to yell something out the window about staying safe and paying attention to her teacher, but Abby is inside before he can try. You laugh while putting the car in drive and pulling out of the parking lot, Mike still flustered and slightly worried.

"She- she didn't even...I didn't get to-" Mike stutters out, speechless.

"Mike," You laugh again. "She's excited about Valentine's Day and seeing her friends. Can you blame her?" You glance at him, smiling before turning back to the road and continuing your short drive home.

Mike grumbles unintelligibly and looks out the window, but still grabs your free hand that's set on the center console and squeezes it lightly.

Getting out of the car causes a harsh chill to run through your body pulling your jacket around the front of your torso while closing the car door. Mike pulls out his keys and quickly opens up the front door, both out of anticipation for your day together and to get you both out of the cold as soon as possible. You rush in side by side, slightly stumbling and sighing as the warmth of your shared home dethaws your frozen bodies. Mike locks the door and watches you fondly as you remove your scarf, your gloves, your coat, and finally your shoes, leaving them by the front door. Not going unnoticed by you, you smirk while walking towards the living room.

"You're staring again, lover boy." You comment teasingly, walking around the couch and plopping down.

Mike blushes, a little embarrassed, but smiling at the nickname. He removes his excess layers as well, following you to the couch shortly after. He sits directly beside you and wraps one arm around your shoulders, the other snaking around your front, then burying his face into your neck.

A muffled, "I can't help it," vibrates against your neck while Mike rubs his thumb along your hip.

You lean into Mike's embrace, laughing a bit at his breath tickling your neck. He pulls you closer and starts peppering kisses along your neck, the act of affection making you giggle as you lightly try to push him away playfully.

"Mike, come on." You whine, weakly pushing at his face this time, trying to turn him away.

"What? I can't kiss you, my love?" He speaks against your throat again, his smile causing his stubble to scratch your skin a little bit.

You resign, defeatedly leaving your hands to rest on his chest and sighing out of fake annoyance. He leaves quick, gentle kisses along your neck, collarbone, shoulder, and trails up your jaw. Getting closer to your lips, he brings his hand up from your waist to cup your cheek, He finally presses his lips against yours sweetly, the most innocent of kisses, Mike's signature. He was pouring every ounce of his love into this one kiss, taking his time, lips moving slowly against yours. His thumb now softly grazes your cheek as he pulls away a few minutes later. He's got kind of a shy look on his face when you open your eyes.

"I got you something...for today." He whispers, glancing up from your lips to make eye contact.

"You did?" You inquire back, looking up affectionately, but feeling a slight twinge of guilt. "You didn't have to do that."

Mike gives you one final peck on the lips before pulling away. He stands up, grinning.

"Gimme one sec- " He says right before turning and walking down the hallway to your shared room.

You both had anticipated spending the day together, but you didn't expect any gifts. You loved Mike to death, but sometimes you never knew what to expect from him. All that really mattered to you was spending time together, which you didn't get to do often despite living together. If you were lucky, you got to spend time with both the Schmidt siblings, like this morning. Today was about you and Mike, though, and all you wanted to do was cuddle and talk each other's ears off until you couldn't think of anything else to say. Lost in thought, you barely notice as Mike walks back to you, holding a small object. He sits back down next to you, bringing your attention back to him. His body facing you, he smiles nervously and rubs his hand on the back of his neck.

"It's not much, but..." He trails off, holding out the item and presenting it to you.

You look down and your heart melts. In his hand is a cassette tape with your name scrawled on the front. You beam up at him while grabbing the tape, and then you look at your name written in the center. You can tell Mike put a lot of effort into printing your name as nicely as his hands allowed him to, noticing also the miscellaneous tiny, slightly sloppy, hearts surrounding it. You hold the cassette to your chest and look back up at him.

"Michael Schmidt, did you make me a mixtape?" You ask playfully.

He loved hearing you say his name. You can see a light blush spread across his face as he smiles shyly, his hand still anxiously messing with the back of his neck.

"Yeah, I tried- well, it's got, like, songs that remind me of you and stuff. Songs that remind me of us," he stammers, bashfully looking down at the tape. "Do you like it?"

He looks back up at you hopefully, using his other hand to nervously pull at the bottom of his shirt. You smirk and stand up, still clutching the cassette to your chest.

"Well, let's see..." You trail off, teasingly, walking across the living room to the cassette deck near the entertainment center.

A familiar song begins to play and you smile softly now. You turn towards Mike and walk back to the couch, standing over him. He looks up at you quizzically before you reach your hand out to him.

"Wanna dance?"

He looks slightly relieved and grabs your hand, standing up and pulling you to the center of the room. One pair of hands intertwined, his other on your waist, your other on his shoulder. You stare at one another lovingly, almost sickeningly sweet the moment being shared. The tempo of the song didn't matter, you both slowly swayed back and forth, taking in the tranquility of the scene. You squeeze his hand and he squeezes back, rubbing his thumb over yours.

"No one's ever made me a mixtape before," you comment distractedly, most of your focus being on Mike's puppy dog eyes that you loved so dearly. "it's definitely worth however much time you spent on it. When did you get a chance to do this anyway?"

A lopsided smile appears on his face.

"A little too much time," he laughs a little. "And I put it together while you were sleeping the other night. Though, most of the time I spent was thinking of songs to put on it. That took me a few weeks."

You move the hand that was resting on his shoulder up to cup his cheek. Mike leans into your touch and closes his eyes, humming in contentment. You lean forward and capture his lips in a quick kiss, his eyes fluttering in pleasant surprise, kissing you back. You pull away, using the hand holding his face as leverage to start peppering kisses all over his face. You go from the corner of his lips, to his stubbled cheeks, his forehead, his nose, his chin, and finally back to his lips. He smirks knowingly and opens his eyes to look at you.

"What are you doing, love?"

"Paying you back for earlier," you smirk back at him, pinching his cheek before resuming your hand's previous position. "And for the amazing Valentine's Day gift."

You take both of your hands now and place them on the sides of his face. His eyebrows furrow but he's still smiling, both of his hands now placed on your hips to keep you both balanced. You start placing soft, quick smooches everywhere now. Rapidly placing kisses all over his face, causing you both to laugh, smiling against his skin. Your laughter in unison with the music playing sounds like heaven to Mike, knowing that moments like these are rare. Though treasuring the moment, both of you feel tenderness in knowing more memories like these will happen as your merged existences face what everyone craves more of, time.

Masterlist Link

Divider: saradika and saradika-graphics on tumblr

Gif: charlie-eppes-blog on tumblr

[upn-the-sky]

General Kratos (no-ashes OOAK, part 2)

What's going on here?

Part 1 - Head

Poor me, it's been a while. Lasted autumn was a hard time for me, but I tried to find time and strength to continue making this OOAK anyway.

Here could be a scream like" NEVER AGAIN!!", but it won't be here, because it is a lie, yeah? Yeah.

Of course I knew that making Kratos's Dominus armor is going to be difficult even with the experience I had with Ares (❤). And it was! Kratos's outfit turned out more layered, had more elements, more different textures. I am just afraid that photos can have a so-so quality, i am sorry..

Well, come on under the cut.

When I made Ares, I've already said that I wanted to be as close to the gow1 design as it possible. Not a simple task, there is only one cutscene in gow1, where you can see this armor's details closely, and also I found a couple of early concepts.

Dominus armor was also made as a custom skin for the gow3 and I used a couple of screenshots from there for the shin panels, but somehow gow3 variation of this outfit has a little different... mood.. I don't know. More bitchy vibe maybe?

Well, anyway everything starts with the cuirass.

--------------

Cuirass

I decided to make a cuirass differently this time, taking into account that Kratos's torso should not be scratched anyhow while taking the armor on and off, because of his body art.

In some way his outfit is more realistic, I mean, at this screenshot you can see that he wears chiton under the armor. Bad news for the future-me, I thought then, but it solved a problem with scratches.

As we can see, his cuirass is a classic Lorica musculata, and I was going to made it the same way I made Ares's armor, using linen fabric and CVA glue. I wanted his cuirass be a single piece, wearing over the head, with fasteners on the sides, so I changed a pattern since the last time and started to glue.

After separating a base from the body, I started to sculpt a relief of the pectoral, abdominal and back muscles. I've had a couple of tries actually, because i needed to be sure that the relief won't crack during bending armor in shoulderstraps. After curing I sended a sculpt, put layer of a patch, and the base is ready.

Well it was an easy part. Here was a huge timeskip in real life, because I sat there and brainstormed how to make these "birds" over the chest. At screenshot you can see that their claws also forms a line of a diaphragm. An obvious option was just to sculpt these birds, but I was afraid of material cracking near the collar and armholes. So there was no other option, but to make these bas-reliefs also of the thick fabric.

Nothing scary, right? Just draw a bird, move the pattern, cut it and glue it over the cuirass.

After that I've just needed to seal all the edges with silky cord and paint everything with acrillic paints.

Oh, and sew hooks-fasteners.

---------------

Skirt and belts

After the cuirass I went south. Because I was afraid of a rectangular piece of fabric, which could end my whole career. (I mean chiton... I wasn't ready for it. And then I still didn't have a right fabric for it.)

Okay, as a General Kratos doesn't wear pteruges, he wears skirt with two long plate belts with relief and some chain-mail piece. Same as Ares has, or I'd say, same as Freya has, yeah. Looks more like her chain-mail, also made from tiny round plates.

Skirt was an easy thing to do. I used a simple dark-brown leather with the silky golden cord over the edge.

Chain-mail is more interesting. Of course I could make my life difficult and make it by myself, but for such miniature when you can find an already perfect piece of material, it is much better. Small, weaved, metallic round plates.. with smooth surface.. I used earrings for this. Just torn them with plyers in a right way and painted with acryllics, and sewed to the skirt.

Long belts also needed to be made of metallic plates, but I sculpted them, glued to the knitted base for the realistic movability and painted also with the acryllics.

--------------

Chiton and wraps (and bracers)

Okay, maybe one more little rant won't hurt anyone. Do you know what's the most wrecking thing you deal with while working with a rectangular pieces of fabric? You should find not only the right color, but a right feeling.

Maybe it is just me, but I think, when you make an ancient warrior doll, you can't use fabric which feels too.. modern, when you look at it or touch it. Even if Kratos was hm quite wealthy as a general, Spartans themselves were very ascetic people, they used simple fabrics with rough textures. But at the same time it should not be too rough to the body and it shouldn't be too thick, because it is underwear.

Long story short, muslin is my friend now. But sewing process is not my friend. How I am glad that all greek clothes is a differently sized rectangulars. I know I am not making chiton right, it should be wearing around the body and pierced over the shoulders. But you can't be absolutely realistic everytime. Besides, it is still an underwear, it's main goal is preventing scratches of the body.

Bracers were easy. Just a glued fabric again with the cotton cords at the edges and a schematic golden depictions of goddess Nika standing on the globe. (I discovered this today lol..).

---------------

Sandals and shin panels

Muslin is still my friend here and sewing is not, because I needed to start with preparing wraps again, which covers legs from the toes to the knees. Hm, smart..

Design of the sandals and shin panels I took from the gow3 variant of this armor. I pretend that they are a single pieces too...

I've already had a good pair of the leather soles so I glued wraps to them and started to make a base for the shin panels. Same way I did them for Ares. Fasteners of the panels and sandals stripes are also from the cotton cords.

------------

And... Prepare your spirits, General is here.

Fuf. And this is it. Dominus armor is complete. But is this the end???????

No.

Because Kratos is not a whole person without the most important thing in his life. Yeah yeah, the reason this entire project took almost a year is because I was made Lysandra and Calliope at the same time with Kratos. And they are finished too at this moment. I'll try to write posts for both of them soon, but now, at the Christmas Eve I wish you have a good time with your families.

Merry Christmas, my dears, and Happy upcoming New Year!

See ya very very soon and thank you for watching.

[tamsinbeybey-she-no-porcupine]

okay this is for the "I say Havers"-meta anon because I feel a bit bad that I didn't give you what you wanted🙈

So we pick it up again after, the last post I showed you.

Captain says his line about the cover drive, Havers thanks him and then this happens :

(Two btws: -I remember making one of my silly little lazy posts with "say something I'm giving up on you" to this image

-just found out whilst looking for the GIF: I actually can tell from Gifs that only have his facial expression what has been said to him and at which point we are in the scene,solely based on his expression😮 )

Sorry back to the meta:

Would you look at him. In the first scene we have with him Cap dismisses him by saying "carry on" and Havers gets back to his duties. But here Cap, all wrapped up in his feelings made room for a pause by not saying anything after his cricket comment.

Now Havers says this and of course he can't just leave,he has to be dismissed and my boy has places to be (north-africa). But this is clearly not him asking for further commands etc.

Look at his eyes completely fixed on Cap and his raised eyebrow and the movement of the head. It's simutaneously the gesture one makes to remind someone that it's their turn to speak or do something as well as it looks like he tries to not only encourage Cap but is trying to indicate that "If you have anything to say, now is the time". Basically it looks like he's desperately waiting/yearning/hoping that Cap will adress his feelings/confess his feelings. He's almost trying to nudge him mentally to spit something out. (Still believe His inner monologue here was "say something, say something, say something!")

But Cap just confirms that that's all and in this second Havers realises that Cap won't say anything. And look how dissapointed he looks because it's just not happening. He's giving up and very very briefly has to get his facial expression in check. he turns to leave

(Excuse the screenshot quality I'm typing this on my phone and had to take this from YouTube)

So Cap now panicks a bit because this is probably the last conversation they'll be having and he at least has something to say that resembles a good bye or an I miss you just something to tell Havers what he means to him. So at the last minute:

and of course Havers whips around with an expectant look the only difference is he does not look like he's screaming internally wondering If Cap will confess anymore. I guess because he's already in his stiff upper lip/professional mode because my god the man can hide his emotions Like 1000 times better than Cap. Also he has given up after Cap gave him emotional whiplash twice already in this conversation. But nonetheless there is still a faint hope which is shown by how fucking fast he turns towards him.

So the next part hast been said by others before. Cap tries to say something, his courage leaves him, he shakes his head to himself and settles for

With this pleading look on his face of I dunno "please I mean it"? "please you have to understand/to see"? "Please believe me when I say"?

Wordwise though he's going the semi professional route of "I really liked working with you because I like you as a colleague"

So now Havers reaction which I for the longest time could not get. I mean i get the nod that's a "acknowledged....thank you ...you too... bye"

But the smile? So yeah now I gotta say first of all professional mode is on. But also in a way he got an "It's a shame that you're going, I wish you we're staying" but just not as a romantic confession. So he's smiling because at least he got that and it was sincere? Also happy that Cap did at least say something about his emotions towards him in the end?

seriously interpretations on that smile are very welcome.

Sorry this all is again incoherent babbling, but at least it's now about the right part of the scene.

[tarot-by-e11e]

Hii!!

How are you doing?!?

I know I'm SO late for feedback and i'm really sorry because I could not remember my password since WEEKS and had to dig my gallery to find the screenshot for the password only to not find it, and that it was in trash, so I gave up THEN after days I remembered I wrote it in my notes app, sigh.

Thank you so so so so so very much for your reading and you're so right to point that out because, again, I'm not exaggerating and also at the same time no exaggeration would suffice that you're one heck of a reader— you grasp our energies like A PRO, wow. It's commendable, truly. And YES i am the bookworm type which embarrasses me too cause my friends are more streetsmart etc so why I am not always baffles me (well because I am home-sloth, that's why?!)

And if it's okay, what does it means to drop the rose-tint glasses? Because I've been skeptic of life, signs and even from myself. How more do I have to be less-optimistic?

Thank you once again for such a profound reading and for your precious time energy and time, and PLEASE take care of yourself, and I know nobody asks stress to give them a kiss but please do not let it affect you so much.

And thank you for existing and helping us, if I can, then I would love to help you even if it's by sending you positive vibes and energy and love.

Hi dear,

Thank you for taking the time to sending me a feedback!

OMG, you actually lost your password!?! I hope you didn't have any important emails that you couldn't reply to. I'm proud of you for remembering your password even if you had unintentionally deleted it before! I hope you didn't accidentally delete other important things.

I'm really happy that the reading resonated with you. Seriously, you're definitely spoiling my Leo moon with praises (please don't stop; I like this type of recognition of my hard work)

There's nothing to be embarrassed about?! You have your own strengths and hidden talents! And when it comes to the rose-colored glasses, it's more of, be discerning with how you view people.

Do you see them as they are? Or do you only love and support the idea of them? There's a reason for that.

The best you see in others, is the perceived actualization of their potential, being honed and utilized to the maximum if you were in their shoes. Like, if you were them, you'd know how to best maximize their potential and dormant skills to the fullest.

And it's not about being pessimistic, it's about being realistic. Like, if someone has proven to you that they don't value your time and effort, promptly discard anyone who only drags you down.

Again, I'm really grateful that you resonated with the reading. Yup, I'm currently learning to take better care of myself. It's a bit of a adjustment period but don't worry, I'll survive, I always do.

Yess I accept positive vibes and an abundance of paid reading requests because my life source (art supplies, quality matcha, and loose tea leaves) costs some moolah~ ahehehehe!!

[genderwoods]

this is a long post talking about my ocs and my wip. feel free to skip!! i just want to get over my embarrassment of talking about them

ok so. to talk about my ocs first i need to talk about the world theyre in. this is still a nameless wip but for now im calling it 'through the mist' while i decide on a better name.

brief explanation about the world: its the modern world as we know, maybe a few years into the future, but its not very important because society and technology are still pretty much the same. the difference is that in this story, the earth was enveloped by a dark and mysterious mist that is invisible to most people. the origins of this mist is still unknown, but what is known is that: 1) it affects peoples health in the areas that the mist is the most dense, and the number of lung diseases and cancer has incresead ever since it appeared. 2) it has some type of dark magic to it. its essence creates demon-like creatures called spectrums (i still want to find a cooler name) that are unknown by most people, but they bring chaos to the world. you can read more about spectrums and understand them better here (please mind any grammar mistakes, it is still a rough draft!)

but there are special people in the world known as the Enlighted that not only can see the mist, but they are aware of the existence of the spectrums and are given special powers to fight them. most of these people are born like normal humans, and only when they grow up they start to realize that they are different and that theres something wrong in the world they live in. once they find out about their own powers, they are located by a institution called Lux Mundi, and they are recruited either to be a scientist and schollar that studies the mist and the spectrums, or to be a warrior and fight the spectrums.

there are three types of enlighted: the lumen (those who are born with paranormal abilities to help them fight the spectrums), the saltium (those who are born with advanced intellect and are able to understand the complexities behind the magic of the mist and the spectrums) and the granum (those who are both lumen and saltium at the same time. they are very rare.)

this is all you need to know to understand the ocs!! i wont say a lot abt their backstories here so to not make the post even longer but if you want to ask me anything about them, feel free!

btw all of these characters are brazilian and the story takes place in brazil bc well. im brazilian and it was easier this way.

also im not an artist so all i have are picrews 💔 sorry for the low quality of some pictures, for some reason tumblr wont show the album i have them saved in when i open the gallery so i had to screenshot.

1. Kaiki Vitorino, 17

she's our main girl! Kaiki was born Salvador, Bahia but moved to São Paulo with her mom when she was a kid. she and her mom were very close, but due to complications caused by a lung disease, she passed away three years prior to the story, and Kaiki had to move in with her aunt (who also lived in São Paulo). Kaiki is very kind and empathetic, she would never hurt a fly and puts other peoples feelings above her own (sometimes a little too much). she loves geology and has a cool rock collection. Kaiki is a lumen, and her powers are called 'Blessed be The Light', which is basically light manipulation. i won't dive in too deep about their powers here, but you can ask me if you want to!

2. Ayla Rodrigues, 17

Kaiki's best friend since childhood (and secretly love interest)! Ayla was born in São Paulo and met Kaiki in school. she has a very complicated family, which includes divorced parents and a dead younger sister, who died in a car accident with her dad when he was drunk driving. she doesn't speak to him anymore, and grief they dont know how to deal with has led her and her mom to a complicated relationship. Ayla is closed off, aloof and even arrogant to most people. When someone wins her heart however, she shows her more vulnerable side: she's a nerd, loves literature, music and cult movies, likes anime, and will do anything for her loved ones, especially Kaiki, who she is so in loved with is embarrassing. she is a lumen, and her powers are called 'Blesed be the Gravity', which is, you guessed! gravity manipulation.

3. Dandara Carvalho, 20

Born and raised at Lux Mundi, Dandara is the Head Trainer of the Lumen's division. Daughter of Eva Carvalho, supreme leader of Lux Mundi's instalations in Brazil, and Isaac Carvalho, Vice-Supreme and Head Counselour for the Saltium's division, Dara is the real deal: strong, disciplined, determined. she has been training since she was a kid, and her mom has always been very strict when it comes to this. Dara was trained by the old Head Trainer before her, an old man called Kaluanã. He was wise beyond this world, but after his passing at the old age of 80yo, Dara took over his functions. Eva wants Dara to be the next Supreme Leader, but all that she wants is to keep training and teaching other Lumens. They have a very strained relationship, but she gets along very well with her dad. Dara may seem intimidating, but she actually has a heart of gold: she's a dork who loves her friends to death and has a loud and weird laugh. she wont stand for injustice and is extremely reliable. shes also extremely, totally down bad for her girlfriend Yasmin. her powers are called 'Blessed be The Fire', but she also knows a lot of different martial arts.

4. Yasmin Senna

Yasmin may not be very impressive at first, but those who know her know that she is, in fact, a genius. Born and raised in São Paulo, Yasmin has always been the pride and joy of her family: as a kid, she was mostly quiet and kept to herself, didnt talk to other kids a lot and prefered to spend the day cracking her toys open to see how they worked. Her bad social skills and reclusion made her an easy target for bullying in elementary school – kids would take her toys away and mess with her all day long. this lead to a fatidic accident where one day she had a meltdown and unleashed her powers, 'Blessed be the Sound', a type of soundwave manipulation, and left everyone in the scene, including her, deaf. nowadays, yasmin uses hearing aids, but she has long ago gotten used to being deaf, and she doesnt mind her disability, but feels extremely guilt for the accident. she's the grandaughter of kaluanã, daras old mentor, but she had only know him as a kid before he moved to Lux Mundi. this is what made dara want to get closer to her at first, but then they feel in love. yasmin is extremely smart – in fact, she is a granum, but she refuses to use her powers, so she only works in the Saltium division.

5. Eric Senna, 19

Yasmin's twin brother, Eric is probably the only out of the Lux Squad that has decent social skills. He's charming, charismatic, funny, smart and has the world's biggest ego. Eric carries a lot of guilt over the bullying that happened with Yasmin, because he feels like he was too weak to protect his sister, so he has kind of become overprotective over her, even this kind of pisses Yasmin off (and Dandara too). he's one of those people that always act like they're the best, but deep down are their own worst enemy. he's talented, has a hundred different hobbies and speaks three languages. eric is always down for challenges and he loves to prank people. he has a cat and dog relationship with Dandara: they're always fighting and bickering, but they truly care for each other a lot. Eric is a lumen and extremely insecure about his powers – 'Blessed be the Thunder', electricity/lightining manipulation – because no matter how much he trains, his powers doesn't seem to get stronger.

These are the 5 main characters kf my wip! WOW ok this was. a lot. If someone has actually read untill now. thanks a lot, and let me know if you have any questions about anything in my wip or about my ocs! I love to talk about them!! :D

[hypezombies]

WHAT IF THE UPSIDE DOWN IS DIVIDED IN TWO: A COLD SIDE AND A HOT SIDE?

Okay so, I was looking at a screenshot of what the Upside Down was like when Henry was sent there in ‘79 and I thought:”The atmosphere definitely used to be hot back then”. We’ll come back to this, but for now take a look at the light. It’s yellow and warm, it’s not the same cold, blue, barely-there, night light we see in the Upside Down after Will entered it.

One thing made me brush this thought away initially and it’s the fact that we’re shown how sensitive to heat the creatures from there are. But in the flashback of Henry ending up in the Upside Down (S4e9), we see that it was already inhabited by Demogorgons and Demodogs.

If we go back to season two, we see how Dart couldn’t even stand the heat emanating from a lamp and ran away/hid from it more than once. And so I thought: even if they used to be able to live in a hot climate, they would have had way too short a time to evolve and adapt to the cold temperature. 

If the Upside Down was somehow changed by Will when he entered it, then they would have had less than an entire year to evolve, between Nov 6th ‘83 and Oct 31st ‘84, when Dustin found Dart.

If it was changed somewhere between ‘79 and ’83, it still would have been an incredibly short amount of time, going by our world’s standards. But hey, these are creatures from a fictional alternate dimension, as much as it seems impossible to me, it could actually be. 

And then I thought:”Dart only hid/ran when the light was pointed directly above him and there’s a scene of him going outside Dustin’s house in the daylight (under the shade of some trees)”.

So the Demodogs AND Demogorgons (Nancy sees the Demogorgon during the day in Steve’s backyard, in season one, again under the shade of some trees) definitely can stand a certain amount of heat. Yes, they’re more sensitive to it than most creatures from our dimension, but they’re used to living in the dark, so of course they would be. So them being able to live in a hot climate in the past and slowly adapting to a colder one and partially losing their heat tolerance, makes sense. 

I rewatched the scenes of the UD in ‘79 and took some pictures (so the quality sucks, so sorry). Let’s look at them before getting to why I thought about the possibility of the Upside Down being sort of divided in two.

We can see red-ish, orangey sky (my camera made everything a lot more yellow than it actually is, idk why); sparks in the air, exactly like the ones that fly out of bonfires; lightings; warm, yellow light everywhere, coming from the ground too. Now, I don't know what could be emitting that light from the ground. Fire? Lava? I don't know, but it’s undeniable how visibly hot it used to be in the Upside Down.

While rewatching season two, I got to the scene in episode five, in which the Lab scientists are showing Owens the samples of the contaminated dirt they took from the farms around Hawkins. When put above a flame, they started floating and spinning around.

Where else have we seen that same behavior? Yes, we’ve seen it with the Mind Flayer (this got me thinking about the hive mind and how the MF particles are probably, somehow, most likely, the same particles that were in the contaminated dirt and could even be everywhere else in the UD. But that’s a whole other thing and I don’t wanna go spiraling down that hole too right now). 

So I started thinking about how and why the Mind Flayer behaves the same way as the contaminated ground samples when they are placed above a flame. 

We see that he's made of spinning particles in the flashback in S4 (and not only, but we'll get to it). If we think about how the atmosphere was hot back then, then it makes sense for it to be acting the same way as the heated particles in the dirt.

But we also see him act the same way in S2 too, when the Upside Down had already become cold and dark. 

But when Will was having the visions and seeing the Mind Flayer, it was initially always accompanied by lighting and a red sky.

(Exactly like the sky from which Henry was falling, when he got sent to the Upside Down and exactly like the sky where he keeps the bodies of his victims in S4, where he didn't want Max to see).

If I think of lighting and red light, I think of heat.

The MF stopped being accompanied by lighting and red sky when he got close to Will: on Halloween night and the day he got possesed. 

This is when I thought:"What if only part of the Upside Down is dark and cold and stuck on the night of November 6th 1983? What if somehow everything else is still the same and where Hawkins is, is the only part that changed?" 

When the Mind Flayer was far away in Will's initial visions, he had a red sky and thunder behind him. Very similar to the sky where he was when Henry found him (the red sky we see behind the MF in S2 is much, much darker than the orangey one in S4, but you get what I mean). So what if he was still on the "hot side" of the Upside Down and when he entered Hawkins and got close to Will, he entered the "cold side" we all know. And maybe when he did that, he didn't enter it in its entirety. Maybe part of him was still far away, in the "hot side" and that's why it was still spinning on itself.

I mean if we think about it, the Mind Flayer is HUGE, so it can easily stretch for kilometers. And when Will sees it with the dark blue sky, it seems to grow. I think it makes sense for it to be "growing", cause it's coming from a far away place and taking shape in another. When you look at something in the distance, getting closer and closer to you, it does look like it's growing.

This would explain why the particles the Mind Flayer is made of, spin in S2 too.

Now let's look at the official S2 poster. 

On the left of the road, we have our world, on the right, the Upside Down. But the sky on this side is two different colors. On the right of the sign and, in perspective, closer to the kids and Hawkins, it's blue. On the left and, in perspective, further away it's red, just like the sky where the Mind Flayer is. 

So to recap everything: the Upside Down used to be hotter and brighter than how we get to know it in the first three seasons. Somehow it changed between 1979 and 1983 and became cold and dark. But there's a possibility that not all of it changed and only where Hawkins and the near surroundings are, did. And the Mind Flayer is usually in the unchanged, hot side, of the Upside Down and entered the cold side, (that maybe, possibly Will changed with his powers in S1?) when he got to the UD version of Hawkins, while still partially staying on the hot side.

I most likely just read too much into it and the spinning particles were there only to make us connect the dots with the Mind Flayer, but this was still a lot of fun to think about and I hope at least someone enjoyed reading it :)

[pan-magi]

I'm doing end of the year cleanup on my computer as one does. At least, I do, lmao.

I thought to myself. Damn, I have a lot of Magi shit on my computer.

To understand why I have so much I need to explain that I tend to keep the screenshots I take for gifs, for some reason. They're PNG files so they're massive. I want the best quality so when they're compressed down to gif all the quality isn't shot to hell. After I edit them I load them up and make them a gif in one program or another. It used to be Photoshop but fuck Adobe's subscription model. Now, I use a few different programs.

With me? How about I tell you that me not bothering to delete original screenshots I have a grand total of 30+ GB of Magi content saved on my computer. For another reference, personal photos I've uploaded to computers for over a decade (compared for Magi I've only been making stuff on and off since 2017) is only about 10GB. I don't take many photos in real life but still. Over 3x the amount, lmao.

(Image: a screencap of some file data. The location is marked out. The size is 31.9 GB or 34,296,431,659 bytes. A total of 12,133 files and 148 folders.)

That and considering the series itself (minus Sinbad no Bouken since I still can't get ahold of it), at about 78GB, I have over a hundred gigs on my computer dedicated to Magi. I had no idea it got so out of control.

Anyway, so I should just delete old screenshots because the saved gifs themselves are only about 1/3-1/2 GB. My computer is getting overstuffed and I should admit I have a problem.

While cleaning, I thought about my first Magi gif I did.

My style has chamged. My humor hasn't really lol.

(I'm so sorry about the stretchy. I didn't size stand-alone images right. Shit if you make images exactly 300 in width like I do. Don't remember when the change came in but I hate it XD.)

[becharm-27]

Mother(figure)s of Stargirl

screenshots credit: @StargirlWiki on Twitter; gif credit: @stripesysheaven

Barbara certainly lives up to the phrase on her mug. Not just for the kids who live with her, either. It's so sweet the way she takes care of their friends as well.

While Bridget started out the series among the ranks of moms who don't deserve their titles, she certainly gets her redemption arc as the story goes on. My favorite moment of her supporting Beth comes from Summer School: Chapter 8, but I also love that she becomes a sidekick.

Speaking of redemption arcs, watching Paula turn her life around was one of the most pleasant surprises from Stargirl. She always loved Artemis, but seeing her become a hero cemented that. How her story ended hits even harder today. I'll explain more at the end of the post.

Wouldn't dare go this whole post without mentioning Maria, and no I don't mean Montez. Maria Carmen Saravia was a better mom to Yolanda than her biological mother will ever be.

Now for some mothers I wish we could've seen more of. Denise is up first because, like Joey, I was invested in her character very quickly. They were like my Henry before Henry, because he took time to earn my respect. I dunno, there was just something about her.

Anaya's main trait was coddling Isaac. There had to be more to her story. I'm assuming she wasn't always so smothering, and that developed after the death of her husband. I really would've liked to see who she was beyond her affiliations. And that power set was worth exploring.

My jaw hit the floor when I heard Christine's dying wish. Nice subversion. Evil as she and Jordan might've been, they clearly loved their kid (the latter up to a certain point, anyway). If nothing else, I'm thankful she gave Cameron his talent.

I couldn't find or make a decent screenshot of Wendi. Her only scene goes by so fast. You can feel the panic as Rick's parents left him behind. There's no way she knew JUST how bad her brother was. I wouldn't name a legacy OC after her otherwise.

Neither Suzanne nor Bobbie ever got to be happy, and I blame Dragon King for that. He made Cindy into the monster she thought she was, which is probably why Eclipso was able to manipulate her. I'm sorry they suffered.

Merry's early JSA affiliated days would've been so cool to see. It's a shame her only appearance is in a single picture.

And lastly, two mother figures I was glad to be wrong about. Nurse Love was revealed to be just trying to help for decades. She just had the wrong idea about how. And once Miss Woods got put in check, she really came through reminding Rick of his worth.

An honorable mention, Maggie. What she did in her past put her on top of the list of mothers who don't deserve to be called such. But the last thing we see her do is try to be better. I really wanted to see her earn her happy ending.

To close, I wanna talk a little about my mom.  She shared qualities showcased by some of these characters:  Sweet, hardheaded, creative, caring, smart, beautiful, funny.  She passed away in 2005.  I miss her always, but today more than usual.  She's my greatest inspiration. 

[mediadesignspring2023]

I couldn't figure out how to screenshot on Netflix, so just had to take photos of my screen using my phone - sorry about the poor quality!

I found Platon's explanation of how he uses the subject's eyes as a means of bringing out their spirit and showing his connection with them very interesting. I think that this side-by-side compilation of his various portraits demonstrates how he can use the same technique/ strategy with different people, but the end result and the emotion being communicated can vary widely.

In this scene, Platon discussed how sitting still and observing people walking by provides you with a window into the human experience. This really resonated with me because my job involves sit in the lobby for the UC at The New School for hours and I have found that this is a really unique way of experiencing the school and its student body.

I found the final scene of the episode to be really powerful. Platon's experiences in the Congo demonstrated how much he cares about each individual subject and how he takes his time in making them comfortable. In my opinion, he really understands his responsibility as a photographer and the power that he hold's in communicating and capturing a subject's story.

#platon #GraceKeyworth

[lacebird]

💜  HOW TO MAKE A GIF WITH PHOTOPEA 💜

Hey everyone! I recently got asked to do a tutorial on how I make my gifs. I know that many people (such as myself) don’t have access to Photoshop for various reasons but they’d like to get into gif making. When I started making gifs, I only had a free trial of Photoshop, but when that ran out, I had to find another way to make gifs. Enter Photopea! A free, web-based software that you can use anywhere and that works just like Photoshop! 

In this tutorial, I’ll teach you how to make a basic gif like the one I did above. I use a macbook air, but it should be doable on a regular pc too!

If you found this helpful, feel free to share it with your friends! The tutorial can be found under the cut below 💜

THINGS YOU’LL NEED

A browser (I switch between Safari and Chrome, more about this later)

A screencapping software (like MPlayer OSX Extended) or, alternatively, a presentation program like Keynote or Powerpoint.

A program to screenrecord or a program that let’s you download from YouTube 

Lots of patience bc gifs are annoying little shits <3

1. GETTING A VIDEO BY SCREENRECORDING

First things first, you need to have the clip you want make a gif out of. There are plenty of ways that you can get them. I’ve seen some gifmakers say that they torrent entire movies and gif from that. The way I do is I screenrecord the part I want to gif directly from where I’m watching the movie or show (like Disney+ or Netflix [or something like 123movies if you’re a pirate 🏴‍☠️)]). That way, I don’t have to download the entire movie and I have just the part that I want.  

To screenrecord, I use my macbook’s built-in program called Screenshot. 

Open the program by pressing ctrl + command + 5 on your keyboard and you get these funny little buttons.

Click on the button that says record entire screen. The program is now recording your screen. Play the scene and make sure you expand the video into full screen so you get a full resolution. When you’re done, click the stop button that is at the top right of your screen (next to the wifi and battery symbols.)

If you don’t have Mac, I suggest you look into how to screenrecord on your computer, as I don’t know how other operating systems work. Sorry!

1B. GETTING A VIDEO FROM YOUTUBE WITH CLIPGRAB

Another way you can get videos is from Youtube. I use a program called ClipGrab for this. Download and open the program. You’ll get this window

Simply paste the link and chose the highest quality, then click ‘grab this clip!’. Done!

2. SCREENCAPPING

After we’ve obtained the clip we wanted, we can do this two ways. The first way is to use the program MPlayer OSX Extended. Here’s a tutorial on how to set it up, make sure you do this if it’s your first time using the program. Make sure that you have a special screenshot folder!

Open MPlayer, then go to file > open and find the video of the scene you screenrecorded or downloaded. MPlayer will now play the video. Use the left and right keys (< and >) to go go backwards or forwards 1 minute, but try not to move around too much because the software crashes if you do. If that happens, just click the reopen button when the popup comes on, and reload the video again.

When you’ve gotten to the point you want in the video, press the command + shift + s buttons at the same time and the program will now take a screencap of every single frame until you stop. 

If everything goes smoothly, you should find all your frames in your screenshot folder that you’ve made before when setting up the program! 

2B. USING A PRESENTATION SOFTWARE TO MAKE A GIF

If you want to skip the screencapping part and you want to have a fully completed gif, you can do the second option. That’s what I used to do before I got MPlayer. In my experience, it’s a really fast way to make a gif, but the quality isn’t really good. 

Here’s a tutorial on how to turn a slide into a gif in Keynote.

Here’s a similar tutorial on how to make a gif on PowerPoint.

Basically, you make sure that the size of your presentation is the same as your video, and that you make sure to export one slide into a gif. Also make sure that you export in the highest quality!

3. LOADING THE FRAMES IN PHOTOPEA

Finally, we can start giffing! As I said at the start, Photopea can be used anywhere, but I switch between Safari and Chrome. The reason why is that if I upload the frames in Chrome, the frames will be out of order. In Safari, that doesn’t happen, but the downside is that once I start editing, Safari will reload the page because it takes up too much memory. 

So, first I go to photopea.com on Safari. I click New Project and put in the same dimensions as the screencaps (in my case, they are 1440x900 px). You’ll get an empty project. 

Then click file > open & place and select your screenshots. Wait until Photopea has loaded all the frames, then, at the speed of light, quickly click file > save as psd before Safari reloads! You’ll find it in your folder where all your downloads are.

Next, I open Chrome (I use the incognito window because I have adblock on my usual Chrome, the program won’t work as usual if you have it enabled) and I click Open From Computer, locate your saved .psd file that you saved from Safari. 

Now, you’ll see all the frames as individual layers. Select everything by clicking on the first layer, then golding the shift button and clicking on the last layer. Press command + G to group the frames into a folder. Here’s how everything should look after you’ve grouped the layers.

^^ See how Agnes approves! Agnes things you’re going a great job!

Now, it’s time to crop the gif and get rid of the black borders. Making sure that the folder is selected, click on the crop tool (or press C) and click on Fixed Size

W is Width and H is Height, write in your sizing here. Tumblr’s max width is 540, so I put the width as such. For the height, I use 405. Then you just drag the corners until you’ve selected the part that you want, like this

Press enter and the image will be sized down 540x405 px. 

Now, our gif looks like this after cropping!

Open the folder so you can see all the layers. Select all your layers and right click on them, then click rasterize. 

Then, go to layer > animation > make frames. You’ll now see that each layer begins with _a_ - this is crucial because this is how Photopea knows that the layers are part of a gif. If your layers don’t begin with _a_, then it will not play as a gif

If you instead already have a gif done, all you have to do instead is simply click open from computer when you first open Photopea and load your already finished gif and it’ll have the _a_ at the start of every layer. You won’t have to go through the steps of loading your frames into a new project to make your gif as it’s already done and in a folder :) Just start cropping once you load it

You can preview your work by going to file > export as > gif. Make sure to change the speed in the preview window until your gif plays the way you want it! I put my speed at 500%

4. SHARPENING

Hooray, we now have our gif! But to make it look a little nicer, it’s good to sharpen it. I always use Smart Sharpen when I sharpen my gifs, and many other gifmakers use that too. It’s really good :D

To sharpen your gif, again, make sure that all your layers are selected. Go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. I use two different settings for my gifs, it really depends on the gif.

Setting 1 (which is the default setting)

Setting 2 

 Again, it depends on the gif, play around until it looks good to you!

Here’s our gif after sharpening it 

I ended up deleting the last few layers as the gif got bigger than 10mb (that’s Tumblr’s file limit, it your file is bigger than 10mb, it won’t upload). I also added a gradient map and it made the file size smaller, more about that in the next segment!

5. COLORING

Here’s the fun part! Now we get to play around with the gif, making it brighter and look Extra Nice™!  Since this is a black and white scene, I make sure that the blacks and the whites really pop. 

Notice how in the original scene it’s not actually b&w, it has a slight sepia tint to it. I want to remove this, so I add a gradient map by clicking on the white square with a black circle (I want to point out that we’ll be clicking on this button a lot in this step)

and I change the blending mode to Saturation

Then I add a curves layer using these settings

Then a second curves layer

Brightness/contrast 

Then my favourite! Selective color! First layer, I deepen up the blacks

Then another selective color layer, this time the whites

Lastly the neutrals

Here we have the final results!

Wasn’t this a gas! I hope this helped you out, let me know if you want to know anything else about gifmaking, I’m happy to help! Also, sorry if I wasn’t very clear, I’m bad at explaining 🙈

MORE RESOURCES:

Here are some other tutorials that are really helpful in making gifs. These users use Photoshop, but you can still use their tips most of the time in Photopea too, you just need to play around and see what works for you!

Gifmaking for beginners by @chloezhao (this one saved my life)

Pale coloring tutorial by @itsphotoshop

Two-Toned Gif Background by @clubgif​

Text with white outline tutorial by @anya-chalotra​

[wh6res]

dreams come true | yuta

"soulmate or not. i don't shoot blanks." — ny

[ part of the my bloody valentine collection ]

tw. gore, blood, murder, death, killings, mentions of illegal organ trafficking, violence, mentions of stalking, minor character deaths, weapons (a knife and a gun), almost (??) suggestive content but nothing happened

disc. this is rlly fucked up and yuta is unredeemable. i dont condone such acts. this is all a work of fiction and meant to entertain.

wc. 5k

every time you sleep, the void is sickening. it was all you could see, lightyears and lightyears away of pitch black that made your head dizzy and your stomach dry heave. you've always wondered when you'll start dreaming about your soulmate's memories. they were like little secrets, another way for two people to be intimate without even being together. their days were flashing before their soulmate's eyes in the form of a dream. it's as if you spent the day with them!

you loved it, the whole concept of it. it sounded so wholesome and sweet and jesus fucking christ, you've always been such a hopeless romantic.

it was sweet until it turned sour. you loved it until you hated it. it was romantic until it turned downright terrifying.

you wake up covered in cold sweat, panting and gasping as if you've run a whole marathon.

moonlight seeps through your glass window, slightly left ajar for the midnight breeze to pass through – you walk up to it, pull it shut, and draw your thick curtains together. you exhaled, breath shaking as you tried to anchor yourself back to the ground.

with the only source of your light disappearing, darkness envelops you whole. for once, you craved the void. you want that void back if it meant never seeing something like that again – something straight out of your worst nightmare.

"119, what's your emergency?"

"uhm, i think… i think i just witnessed a massacre."

you reiterate everything you saw in the dream – the mahogany door, paint chipping off the drywalls. the doorknob was rusty, so were the hinges, and it made an ominous creak when pushed open. the light switches on, the first you see was a bunch of dirty ice coolers in what should've been the living room, it wasn't even the slightest bit organized. they were everywhere, and the floor looked grimy and disgusting, like there's a stain they can't seem to scrub off. only when your soulmate has stalked closer did you see the labels haphazardly taped on top of the ice coolers.

kidneys. livers. lungs. pancreas. intestines – you nearly vomited on the floor, trying to relay everything you saw to the operator on the other end of the call.

then came the gruesome parts.

their deaths.

they were five people in total. men clad in cheap t-shirts and pants, wearing all these similar leather jackets. some were well-built, ripped in the arms and thighs, but some were skinny, the jackets hanging on their small frames.

they never stood a chance against him.

your soulmate is agile, quick on his feet with outstanding eye-hand coordination. only equipped with a butcher's knife, but it was all he needed to take them down and send them knocking on inferno's gates. he was skilled, knowing when to pounce and where to slash his knife to maim but never to kill. by the time your soulmate was through with them, everything is bloody red. all the victims' eyes widened as they sputtered and choked on their blood – not dead, but dying...

because your soulmate wasn't done yet.

a killer should have a modus operandi, should they not? so he took out a desert eagle, stood before the bleeding bodies, and shot two bullets straight into their eyes. the finishing touch? carving a frown on their faces with his butcher's knife.

the operator only told you one thing after she's made you describe the place for them to track the crime scene down.

"double-check all your windows and doors."

because you couldn't be too sure, not when you have been granted a front seat to the sad face slayer's most recent endeavors.

the detective eyes you with a certain pity. maybe that's why you don't bother meeting his eyes. you sit still on a chair, camera blinking red behind him, the interrogation room is freezing even with the thick jacket you're wearing.

seven billion people in the world and you're soulmate's a ruthless serial killer who took it upon himself to purge the world of evildoers – he was playing god, no wonder the detective is looking at you like that.

"uhh…" he's awkward, fidgeting in his seat. "and you saw this all in a dream?"

"yes."

you've known him only minutes ago. mark lee was his name and he seems to be a subordinate of a higher, more experienced detective named kim doyoung. you don't know whether to feel offended or not for having a doe-eyed newbie taking care of the case, but you pushed it at the back of your mind, knowing his superior is watching on the other side of the two-way mirror.

"did you have, like, other past instances where you dreamt of him? of what he…" mark looked like he was going to throw up. "what he does to his other victims?"

you shook your head. no. "i've mostly just heard of him on the news. i don't think i have the stomach to find out in-depth what the killer does."

mark takes out a folder, features walking the fine white line between looking apologetic or wanting to say me too. "i'm, uhh, really sorry to hear that."

there's a sudden pregnant silence encapsulating the interrogation room. it felt like you were mourning for something, the chains of dread dragging your heart to the ground as it pounded against your ribcage. mark looked like he wanted to say something, but you swore his eyes darted towards the camera in the corner and decided otherwise.

"anyway…" he trails. flipping the folder open in one swift motion. "past sightings have given us the sad face slayer's name."

he slaps down a picture of a man, his hair raven and a permanent scowl etched on his face. the quality was shitty. it looked like it was a screenshot taken from zoomed-in cctv footage.

"nakamoto yuta, twenty-five, japanese, and has slipped one too many times past authorities that at this point, it's practically a talent."

and just like that, it made sense why you're here.

your lips pursed in contemplation, palms quaking as your fingers reach forward to inspect your soulmate's picture. "and… you want to use my soulmate connection –" you glowered. never had a sentence sounded so fucking cursed and utterly wrong. "– to catch him?"

mark can't look you in the eye. "yes. he's very elusive. his killings have been happening cross-country and, as you can see, have garnered national media attention. the police are hanging by a thread here. a month in his case and all we got is his MO, name, and that he has this weird god complex on him. if we can't catch him by the end of next month…" he shrugs. "the feds are going to interfere, sooner or later."

"so…" you trail, urging him to continue.

"so, we need as much information about him as we can get and your dreams about him will be able to provide that."

fucking great.

the much newer revelations of precisely who it was on the other end of the soulmate connection put a significant damper on your mood. you'd like to think your new little cop buddy who follows you around gives you the least bit sense of security, but alas, it doesn't. not when you've seen first hand how yuta took down five men all at once without breaking a fucking sweat – you absolutely refuse to call him your soulmate, you'd never accept a person with his nature as a soulmate.

you try to hide the bracelet mark handed you last two weeks ago, during your time spent in the precinct's interrogation room.

"please have this on you at all times until we catch him, okay? this is for extra measures, just in case something happens to the cop assigned to guard you. just press the little button here and we'll be there before you can even finish shouting 'help!' – hey, i was just kidding! what's with the face?"

considering you're now probably being hunted alive for snitching on a serial killer? mark lee, that was not funny at all.

"do you have to get inside the lecture with me?" you whine, shielding your face with your hair when you notice people shooting glances at the rather handsome cop they assigned to you. "it's not like he'll attack in broad daylight! and in a fucking classroom, for that matter."

jaehyun looks just about ready to hurl you out the window. "lower down your voice," he scolds. "serial killers don't pick a time and place, sweetheart. he kills when necessary and if it's fucking necessary to murder everyone in that classroom to get to you? he'll do it in a fucking heartbeat."

you sigh when the chair next to you screeches against the floor, the aforementioned male taking his seat right next to you. jaehyun felt more like a babysitter than a cop, who seems to have a habit of constantly inputting his not-even-needed opinions on the most superficial things.

are witness protection protocols like this?

it was a good thing that overgrown bat doesn't come hanging around in your apartment, but he does have the police car parked right across the building's entrance. judging by how meticulous and thorough he seems to be, he won't miss any face that comes in and out of the building.

you didn't forget exactly why you're under witness protection. for the cops to waste one good officer to follow you around, you needed to be valuable and being valuable meant sleeping through nightmare-induced dreams of what your soulmate does for a living. the scenes are so gruesome, so graphic and utterly gory, that you dart towards the bathroom first thing after waking up in cold sweat, draining all of dinner down the toilet bowl.

after dreaming of him in action a few times, you've now completely understood what detective lee had said regarding yuta's god complex. it was unsightly, yet there was a twisted sense of heroism to it. if there's one thing, he only gutted the bad guys – but that didn't make nakamoto yuta any less of a bad guy, himself.

i need to ask you a favor [sent 2:05am]

JJH: what? [received 2:10am]

often the nightmares were too much. too much that you thought of escaping its horrors by never getting a wink of sleep ever again – until you realized you're a witness and is probably the only chance for the seoul police department to catch that bastard.

buy me sleeping pills? [read 2:08am]

when you peep out of the window, you find an empty spot across the road where jaehyun usually parks the police car. twenty minutes later, you answer the knocking on your door. he used that little "code" he did for you to know it was him. jaehyun was glowering and muttering about how he wasn't some errand boy when he shoved the plastic bottle in your hand yet, you still thanked him nonetheless.

the pills worked like a charm. you managed to stay asleep throughout the whole night, ceasing those episodes of yours where you jolt awake in the middle of dreaming about the sad face slayer's memories.

life continued for you. it became a little bearable, but that didn't mean the horrific murders you see in your dreams are something you can get used to – you don't think you'll ever get used to the sight of him slashing his victims, the blood trickling like a goddamned waterfall.

today the dreams were different. anticlimactic, per se, if you compare it to the violence so utterly present in his memories.

the first you see were black gates, then it shifted to him ordering coffee in a café (amazing what a simple black mask can hide). it switched to him walking on a sidewalk, then he arrives at his destination, an apartment building – it wasn't too rundown, nor was it extravagant.

the serial killer takes the elevator and walks up to a mahogany door –

your room number is a blaring sight.

you couldn't be wrong, not when the 506 with the missing zero in the middle was a sight you saw every day, going and coming home from university.

that was your front door.

he was at your front door.

you jolt awake, ignoring the icky feel of sweat making your clothes cling onto your skin. ice creeps up your spine and freezes you over when you notice with a sinking realization.

those black gates are from the university you attended. that café is your favorite study nook. and that sidewalk is a route you take every day.

you clamp your hands on your mouth as tears roll down your cheeks in rivulets. you pull the comforters up above your head, fear gripping onto you with a vice-like grip as you sob.

it was in the dead of night, moonlight grazing the confines of your room and hours away from dusk. you finally utter those three words in a frightened whisper.

"he's stalking me."

as if having the overgrown bat jaehyun following and annoying you around wasn't enough, you now have another person keeping watch over you. mark lee, unlike jaehyun, may not be as ripped with muscle, but you heard from your cop buddy that the young detective has a few black belts under him. people at the precinct said that if they have to choose one person who can ever come close to the sad face slayer's agility, mark lee's your guy.

"you gotta be shitting me," you mutter, leaning close to jaehyun to whisper like high school girls talking about gossip. "he doesn't look the type!"

jaehyun, in turn, plays along and copies you. "yeah, true. he gets that a lot, i think,"

"guys, i'm literally in the back seat. i can hear everything."

the change hadn't been too drastic. at least mark was there when jaehyun proved to be difficult, pulling him towards the other way when the older male tried waltzing into your class again. "you don't need to sit next to her in her class! are you serious? there's one exit and entrance and we're on the fifth floor. breaking into that classroom will be the end of nakamoto's serial killer career!"

you shoot mark an appreciative smile, one he quickly returned before hauling jaehyun around the hallway. "we'll just be at the canteen, okay? press the 'lil button on your bracelet and we'll be right there!"

shaking your head with a slight smile on your face, you entered the classroom, sat in your usual spot, and did some of your readings from our other class to kill time. you hardly hear the screech of the chair next to you as it was pulled back. not like you cared much for whoever sat down next to you, but you can't deny there's that feeling of missing jaehyun when he used to force his way into the lecture.

"settle down! settle down, people!"

the professor enters and the class begins.

you were meticulous with your note-taking system. it's thorough, leaving no room for information to slip you. having already printed hard copies of the powerpoint presentation and simply jotting down some extra key points mentioned by your professor.

you were just about to raise your hand for a question when you feel something warm graze past your arm. you absentmindedly look down.

the breath is sucked right out of your lungs.

hi, soulmate

there, scribbled with an ominous red crayon on a small piece of paper. it was almost laughable how innocent it looked but when you follow the ring-clad hand, up the black hoodie he's wearing, and finally to his face—

"hi! i'm yuta."

his cheshire smile spikes up your heartbeat. it makes you want to throw up, makes you want to slam your head against the desk. the fight or flight hormone you have is making you restless, eyes pinned on the serial killer sitting next to you, scared that if you avert your gaze, he's going to take out that desert eagle and shoot you until your skull caves in and the bullets in his magazine empties.

"but judging by your reaction, i don't think introductions are needed, hm?" his tone is easy, conversational even and it shoots a freezing jolt of fear right up your spine. it makes you sweat profusely because you don't fucking know what to do, your thoughts in complete and utter disarray.

"just press the little button here and we'll be there before you can even finish shouting 'help!' – hey, i was just kidding! what's with the face?" you swallow, sneakily pressing the button without breaking eye contact with the serial killer sitting in front of you.

"look upfront. now." yuta orders and you nearly snap your neck as you turn your head with lightning speed.

"i thought i was above the soulmate rules, but here we are. my soul is either too tainted or too great to be tied to such trivial things, but oh well, we learn to work with what we have. surprisingly, i learned to like dreaming about how your day went."

you feel something sharp poking at your thigh and when you look down, he has a silver butterfly knife pointed against you. the precision of the angle he held it with doesn't slip your notice. one slice of that knife, no matter how small, and he'll be spilling your guts in this classroom.

a fat tear rolls down your face.

"can you imagine how much my heart broke when i learned you were spying on me? leaking information to that snobby detective? to those incompetent cops? bad baby, that was very bad of you."

"yuta—"

"you think the cops can save you from me?"

his other hand comes in contact with the nape of your neck, holding your head in place as he leaned down to invade your space. he scoffs, and you can picture that terrifying cheshire grin you've seen one too many times in your dreams.

the knife digs through your coat, the tip hardly poking your skin only because he doesn't want to drive it into you yet. how did he even manage to get inside the university? not to mention the weapons he possessed? shouldn't anyone be suspicious when they see a man dressed in all black, clad in jeans and a hoodie, into a university—

he even dressed the part. with that hood drawn up and carrying that one notebook, he looked fairly normal. someone who can easily blend in with the crowd.

you eye your professor, willing him to look at you but your soulmate is having none of that. you squirm when he drives the knife further, at the base of your stomach. with his other hand, he twirls a lock of hair around his finger. "now, now, soulmate. you don't want half the people here to get hurt, do you? unless... that can easily be arranged—"

"no!" you whisper, head jerking to the side to look at him humming in satisfaction. damn. out of all the faces he's seen contorted with fear, yours is his absolute favorite. with those pleading, glassy eyes and parted lips, yuta is tenting in his sweats.

"thought so," he chuckles. "let's get up. we're leaving. that old crook doesn't care if students just up and went in the middle of his lecture."

you don't want to think about how he even knew that because it implied attending the lectures a good amount of times. it's with sinking realization that jaehyun was right. if it weren't for him insisting to sit next to you, nakamoto yuta would've long gotten you in his claws.

you tried gathering your things until he purred into your ear.

"ah, ah, ah. you wouldn't be needing those with where we're going."

the hallways were empty, not that you had much time to scream for help when he had a knife pointed up your back, shoving you into the fire escape stairs. within the tranquil confines of the staircases, the sad face slayer couldn't fucking care less for your personal space.

he disgusts you greatly, he needn't do anything but stand there in front of you but you can already smell the long blood trail from his path. it reeks of rotting flesh and that infuriating god complex he had left a sour aftertaste.

"you know, i genuinely wanted to get to know you," yuta pouts, shaking the hoodie off his head. his hair raven, it's ends kissing the nape of his neck. he looked like he came right out of a shounen manga but the bloodlust in his eyes is something that can never be masked. "i detested the soulmate connection at first, i thought i should just kill you off because you could be my loose end."

his humorless smile is enough to give you nightmares.

"but seeing how sweetly normal and untainted you are made me hold back," the butterfly knife appears before your line of sight, yuta teasingly dragging the tip right down your cheek to trace your tears. "so, why did you snitch, baby?"

you shiver when he noses the side of your neck, inhaling your scent as his other hand hooks underneath your top, freezing fingers making you jolt. when you don't reply, his patience starts to dwindle. then again, he was never a patient man.

"answer me, you bitch. why did you rat me out?" gone is the playful lilt in his voice. the vibrations surge through you as his deep, demanding voice scares you shitless.

you feel, hear, and smell him everywhere. this wasn't like any nightmare. this is real, and you won't magically wake up on your bed, sighing in relief, knowing he isn't there, that it was all just in your head. no, this was very much real and there's absolutely no escape.

"i didn't," your voice cracks. "i didn't mean to—"

"bullshit!" he yells. you wail in pain when he slams you against the wall, head aching as it came in contact with concrete. "because of you betraying me, i nearly fucking got caught, and i never get caught!"

you were full out sobbing at this point, noisy and unsightly as the snot mixes with your tears. your only hope now is he gives you a quick, painless death and that he doesn't carve and mutilate your face like what he always does to his other poor victims. "i'm sorry! please... i'm so sorry. i was scared—"

he coos mockingly, tilting his head to the side as he inched his face closer. "aw, scared? my sweet little soulmate was scared?" he places the blade flat against your neck. as humiliating and degrading as it was, you almost peed on your clothes. "how about now? i'm sure as hell that you're fucking terrified for your useless life right now."

you cringe when his hand abandons the expanse of your stomach, no longer inching higher, finding its purchase on the hair sitting at the crown of your head. he holds you in place like that, forcing your head parallel against the wall, with his whole body pressing up to you that it's nearly suffocating.

"just one quick little slice," he taunts. you hiccuped when you feel the feathery light scrape of the blade moving against your skin. "you won't even have time to scream… but i'm sure we don't want that, do we?"

you forgot how to speak. forgot how to breathe. whenever your mind wanders, you've always thought about how you'll give this killer a piece of your mind, with the amount of fear and sorrow he inflicts upon other people. but you guess realities were a lot more different than expectations. the yuta you dreamed of meeting is in handcuffs, but fate is a fickle little thing.

"do we?" he repeats, slicing ever so slightly at your skin. enough to draw blood in droplets, never a waterfall.

"n – no."

he smiles. "you can make it up to me. do you want to make it up to me?"

the butterfly knife digs even further. a warning. and if you value your useless life, you should be smart enough to know what to answer. drawing a shaky breath, you tried forcing the ends of your lips up to a smile. "of course, yuta."

your voice breaks as your sobbing grips your body whole. the fear consuming your entire being like a parasite consuming the host. you would've shut down altogether if it weren't for the calloused hands gently gripping your face. "i know, i know. i see how regretful you are, baby. don't worry, i won't hurt you. you'll make it up to me."

anyone would be fucking stupid if you believe those words coming from a serial killer.

in your wrecked state, you barely register that he's pushing you down to your knees. skin coming in contact with the freezing linoleum floor as you refuse to look at what his hands are doing. yuta has pocketed his knife. the sound of a belt unbuckling in itself added insult to injury.

you stare blankly at his shoes as he shoves his bottoms down enough for his cock to show. if you squint hard enough, you'll see tiny splatters of blood in the shoelaces. whether or not he feels you're unresponsive, he doesn't show. maybe he doesn't care entirely. he takes one of your hands and used it to wrap around himself. he gasps, sharp, followed by a hiss.

you feel it throbbing and it strengthens the disgust you feel. no way you're going to give him the satisfaction of eye contact when you're already forced to blow this psycho.

"eyes up."

you sniffled, vulnerability present in the tone you speak. "i don't want to. please, don't make me."

if words alone aren't enough for you to follow orders, maybe you'll feel more motivated if held at gunpoint. it's unmistakable, the infamous desert eagle you've only seen in your nightmares. the last thing you ever expected is to be on the side where the bullet comes out.

the barrel is freezing as he digs it into the crown of your head. "soulmate or not. i don't shoot blanks."

your eyes looked up then. glaring as the tears rolled down your face. "you're a monster," you mutter under your breath. where you got the confidence to fight back is unknown.

"i've heard that before, be more creative next time," he holds your hair tight in one grip, shoving you forward, eye-level to his throbbing dick. "now… suck, baby."

"freeze!"

you knew that voice, you've been hearing it for the last two weeks. "jaehyun–!"

yuta cuts you off, shoving the gun into your mouth. the safety clicking off resonating in the tranquil room. it's deafening, and it makes you immobile.

"hands up. step away from the civilian." whether or not mark is nervous as he points the gun at the serial killer, he's doing a damn good job of hiding it.

yuta sighs, exasperated as he throws his head back. his raised arms came down to tuck himself back in his jeans, and the action made jaehyun's calm exterior crack. "i said, hands up, asshole!"

"chill out, motherfucker. i'm just trying to wear my pants." the serial killer hisses, glaring at jaehyun over his shoulder.

"mark, call back up already. what are you doing?" jaehyun mutters, side-eyeing the young detective whose gun shakes as he holds it up. the taller cop takes a step forward, eyes never leaving the notorious killer as he addresses you curtly. "(name), come here."

just as you plant your palms to the ground to push yourself up, one of yuta's hands shoves you down quick as lightning. "no. she stays here, with me."

jaehyun scowls, takes another step forward. "and what makes you think i'm going to let that happen?"

"i don't think. i know."

there's a constant ring in your ear as the gunshot temporarily renders you deaf. you've shut your eyes in utter fright, hands shooting up to cover your ears but it was too late. you refuse to open your eyes, you didn't want to see a dead body lying before you, even if it belonged to a heartless serial killer.

but when your eyes fluttered open, it's not yuta bleeding out on the ground.

"no, this can't be – jaehyun!"

it was a bullet straight to the head, no one could've survived a shot like that. his eyes are empty as he stares at you, unblinking, stoic. the color is yet to drown away from his milky complexion. but you can't even manipulate yourself into thinking that jaehyun's still alive. not when his eyes are empty, not when he just looks so lifeless.

it couldn't have been yuta who pulled the trigger.

his weapons were on the ground and the shot rang too fast. the sad face slayer couldn't have crouched down for his gun to shoot the cop, it would've taken too much time. and among the three men, there's only another person holding a weapon, and that was –

"great shot, mark."

the detective smiles, but with the blood splattered on his face, it looked cold. "told ya i've been practicing."

yuta hauls you up by the arms, addicted to how frail your body feels as it collapses against him. he's finally got his little soulmate in his arms. and he will never, ever let you go.

the cops lost – you've lost.

yuta, with a sense of victory coursing through his veins, took the liberty of trailing little pecks down your neck as he mutters, "mine, mine, mine!" but you couldn't care less about his display of mocked affection. not when the other person meant to protect you, turned out to be everything you think he wasn't.

mark must've felt the gravity of your stare as he crouches before jaehyun's bleeding body. grabbing the fallen cop's gun, he took it upon himself to empty the magazine. the lopsided grin he sends you broke your resolve more than yuta ever could.

"i'm sorry. it's nothing personal."

jenoluck (c) all rights reserved

[australiancarisi]

Sonny Carisi ~ It Reminded Me of You

the inspiration for this was literally a Ben & Jerry's ad on my facebook Not spon but B&J if you wanna sponsor me hit me up ada!Sonny x Detective!Reader A non-covid world all errors are my own v sorry words: 1365

It felt like weeks since you’d actually spent quality time with Sonny. You didn’t even have to be doing anything you could just sit next to him while he sat on his phone for hours just as long as you were actually with him, that’s all you cared about. It was so much easier when you were both working as detectives, sure you were working and being professional but you were just with him more often than not.

Now that he’s an ADA however, it feels like your schedules just never line up. And yes of course you still get to work with him it’s just not the same level.

You texted Sonny earlier in the day to see how his workload was going, hoping he’d be home at a reasonable hour. It was Friday and you had the full weekend off, not even on call. Liv even promised the only way you’d get called in was if it was a matter of national security. She’d seen how down and exhausted you had been lately and she wasn’t having it - Mama Benson will not let anything happen to her people.

When Sonny replied saying he’d managed to plead out his most pressing cases and that he see you at his place for an actual home-cooked meal and a weekend of doing nothing, you felt yourself burst with happiness.

You were packing up your stuff for the night saying goodbye to Kat and Amanda as they walked out when your phone rang.

A dopey grin spread across your face like always and Fin rolled his eyes, heading into Liv’s office.

“Hey Handsome, I’m just packing up my stuff should be at yours within the hour”

“Doll-“ you knew that tone, you knew it was gonna be bad, something had come up “I’m so sorry Hadid just handed me about 8 files that all are being arraigned on Monday, I’m gonna have to put a rain check on that meal” it wasn’t just going to be a rain check on the meal though, you knew Sonny and you knew he was going to work over the weekend. He put so much pressure on himself to make sure he did well and got the justice the victims deserved that he would exhaust himself on his only weekend off in about 3 months.

Tears welled in your eyes, you looked to the ceiling and blinked them away, determined not to let any fall.

Taking a deep breath to steady your voice before replying, “it’s okay Son really, work is more important”

“Nothing is more important than you Doll” you smiled sadly at his words

“I love you Sonny, it’s okay there will be more dinners and lazy weekends”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course bub, I love you” you reassured him.

“I love you too Doll, I’ll be home as early as I can”

Home.

It wasn’t official but you had basically been living at his apartment lately in an attempt to see each other a little more.

You hung up the phone, throwing it a little aggressively on your desk as Fin and Liv came out of her office. With tears still in your eyes, you sat down and looked up at the two of them.

“y/n...” Olivia started, she knew your plans with Sonny had fallen through, she always just knew.

“Don’t Liv. Please. Because if you say anything I’m gonna cry and I won’t be able to stop” you sighed your voice cracking slightly

“Do you wanna go for a drink? I’m sure phoebe won’t mind” Fin smiled sadly

“N-no” you cleared your throat “no I’m fine I’ll just get some more paperwork done here. You go home”

“Nope, you are not staying here. Go home y/n, get some rest” Liv pulled you up from your best wrapping an arm around you

“Sometimes I just wish he was still here” you whispered

“I know... me too...” Liv sighed

You said goodbye to Fin and Liv out the front of the precinct, reassuring them both that you were in fact okay and grabbed a cab back to Sonny’s apartment.

“Actually just let me out here… Thanks” you smiled to the driver, handing over the money and jumping out of the cab and walking straight into the 7/11.

You walked around the small 7/11 store trying to decide what you wanted. At this point you didn’t really feel like anything, you just wanted Sonny. You spotted the ice cream and well if you weren’t going to get to spend the night with Sonny at least you could spend it with Ben & Jerry. You took your time scanning the different flavours, a very important decision.

Cookie dough...Strawberry cheesecake...Chunky Monkey...

Then your eyes saw it. You grabbed the pint of ice cream and paid, quickly walking up to Sonny’s apartment.

Sonny rubbed his face in exhaustion and sadness. It felt like he hadn’t made any progress in the past hour on any of the cases he had been handed just before he was about to head out the door. He’d had such a plan for the weekend. Tonight he was going to cook your favourite meal and spend the night on the couch watching whatever stupid romcom you could find on Netflix. He planned to take you out on Saturday, walks in the park and maybe the art gallery and then Sunday, his favourite day, he was going to let you sleep in as long as you wanted and make you your favourite breakfast in bed and spend the day doing absolutely nothing. He was going to turn your phones off and spend the day lying in bed, order in any food you guys wanted because it was going to be the last day of just the two of you for probably a while. And now it was all gone to shit because of these cases in front of him.

Sonny loved being an ADA but right now he wished he never left the NYPD. Groaning as his phone pinged with a message he looked at it. It was Liv.

I know you are busy but please go home to girlfriend and get some rest, she needs you

Sonny frowned and typed out his reply

is she okay?

she just misses you Sonny and knowing you, you miss her too

how’d you know i was even still here?

The reply was just a screenshot of Liv’s find my friend's app. Sonny let out a laugh and sent back a heart before packing up his stuff and heading home.

When Sonny finally walked through the door of his apartment it was just before 10pm. Much earlier than you’d expected him. You shot up from the couch when you heard someone at the front door.

“Hey Doll” Sonny smiled putting his briefcase down at the door and shrugging his suit jacket off, letting it fall to the floor without a care in the world

“Sonny!” you ran to him and all but jumped in his arms. It felt silly but you really had missed him.

“I’m sorry Doll” he mumbled into your hair

“what for?”

“for messing up our plans, I feel like I just keep cancelling everything” he sighed

“hey” you pulled back from the hug and cupped his face making him look at you “do not feel bad. I understand, your job is important. Hell, how many times have I been called away? This is just how it is, but I’d rather only spend 5 minutes with you than a lifetime with someone else”

“I love you so much doll” Sonny blushed brushing his lips against yours “I’ll have to work a bit tomorrow but I’ll get everything done and then it’s just you and me all day Sunday” he held his pinky up to you “pinky promise” you grinned wrapping your finger around his. Sonny kissed your hand before leading you over to the couch. “now who replaced me tonight?”

“Chris Evans” you grinned flopping down onto the chair. Sonny reached for the ice cream on the coffee table “oh, and Ben and Jerry”

“Cannoli flavoured?”

“It reminded me of you” you whispered, snuggling into his side.

[annikathewitch]

I posted 5,504 times in 2022

52 posts created (1%)

5,452 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@luminousdelusion

@narwhalismyname

@saturnsocoolioyep

@thecatchat

@celna-samisel

I tagged 467 of my posts in 2022

#useful - 17 posts

#yes - 9 posts

#dsmp - 8 posts

#unreality - 8 posts

#dsmpblr - 7 posts

#art class - 6 posts

#linguistics - 6 posts

#/pos - 6 posts

#badboyhalo - 5 posts

#gender - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#and then i realized he wasn’t and figured that since i didn’t recognize anyone this was probably from some tv show i’d never heard of

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

See the full post

23 notes - Posted March 21, 2022

#4

Okay I’m sorry but has it occurred to anyone that one of the main ways the egg gets to people is by manipulating feelings of loss and every single one of the people who crashed the red banquet has lost someone or something important to them since then?

30 notes - Posted March 10, 2022

#3

I love the kinda background ways that the themes of storytelling and history show up on Dsmp. Eret’s museum. Karl’s library. Ghostbur’s library (he had a library, right? I’m not misremembering things?) Ranboo’s memory books, to an extent. The lost city of Mizu.

I also think it’s interesting that basically every one of the most obvious instances of this that I can think of come from dsmp’s concerningly long list of amnesiacs.

43 notes - Posted February 14, 2022

#2

Right, so there was something I noticed in Sam’s lore stream that I haven’t seen anyone talk about yet, specifically in relation to one of the journal entries.

Now, the only screenshots I’ve been able to get are really low quality, so I’m just gonna copy the text here.

“Journal Entry N100

The vines are running out of room to grow in the ravine. I’m digging tunnels to help them expand further. The first one will be under his house… I’m hearing the egg talk to me wherever I go now…”

The line about the first tunnel being under “his” house is what really stuck out to me, partially because of the I M P L I C A T I O N S.

We only really know of two people, as of current lore, anyway, whose house Sam Bucket could likely be referring to in this line: Bad and Sir Billiam, as they’re the only two who have really had the egg near/on their property.

This means that either a) Sam Bucket was around at the time of The Masquerade, meaning he’s probably immortal in some capacity, or at least really long lived, b) Sam Bucket was the one who put the egg under Bad and Skeppy’s house, kicking off the entirety of the eggpire arc, or c) some combination of the two.

Theory a is supported by the fact that very few people seem to know who Sam Bucket is, despite him mentioning having friends on the server. This could, however, be explained by the extremely high amount of amnesia on the server, especially since the Egg has referenced encountering Foolish before, which Foolish didn’t seem to remember.

Theory b is supported mainly by the amount of clear pictures of Bad and other references to him in the hideout, while there don’t seem to be any pictures of or references to any tftsmp characters whatsoever.

Either way, Sam Bucket has, in canon, been involved in the Egg’s history far longer than we’ve known that he, or even the Egg itself, existed. And it seems like finding out more about Sam Bucket could be the key to finding out more about the Egg.

47 notes - Posted April 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

So, due to a number of reasons, I’ve been writing about characters who use neopronouns and/or more than one set of pronouns a lot more in the past year than I ever have before. And at some point, I noticed that I started thinking less about them as simply a necessity to accurately portray a character’s identity, or something that I did just because “why not?” or because it’s something that’s important to normalize, but as something I could use as a tool in the way I told stories.

Let me explain. Take a moment to just imagine the possibilities playing around with pronouns could give you. Here are some ideas (Admittedly, I only really write in English, so I don’t really know how well any of these ideas would work with languages with different pronoun systems, but I’m sure their are similar things you could do):

Imagine a character that uses multiple pronouns, and, say, the narrator trades off every scene or so (just to avoid confusion; other characters switch pronouns midsentance while referring to the character), but in some circumstances the narrator refers to someone who otherwise appears to be that character by only one of the pronouns that that character uses, which initially appears to be a part of the normal switching between pronouns thing, but is actually foreshadowing to like, a secret twin, or a shapeshifter, or any other of a wide variety of plot twists. (Ex: character who uses multiple pronouns getting weird dreams in which the narrator never refers to them by name and only uses he/him pronouns foreshadowing the fact that the dreams are actually their past self’s memories, since their past self only used he/him pronouns).

Neopronouns used to make language more clear. If every character goes by different pronouns, there’s no ambiguity, right?

On the flip side, characters using similar pronouns in some scenes to make them harder to tell apart in certain circumstances, or else to draw parallels between different characters in certain scenes. Messing with different pronouns gives you better control over ambiguity or lack thereof, even when referring to well-established characters.

Having a character with multiple pronouns makes writing dialogue like 10x easier. Y’know that issue where you have a scene with two characters who use the same pronouns talking and you have to either repeat their names a bunch or find other ways to refer to them? Well, if one of those characters switches pronouns, and you have a scene where they’re interacting with a character who uses he/him pronouns, you can have them use she/her pronouns or neopronouns, if they’re interacting with a character that used she/her pronouns you can use he/him or neopronouns and boom, problem solved!

If you’re writing fantasy or sci-fi, imagine world building a culture where which pronouns people are referred to as change based on something other than gender, such as rank, class, particular types of magical ability, job, relationship to the speaker, or any other societally relevant distinction. Even if this is never explained, readers will probably start to pick up on it, and then you can use a character’s pronouns to convey information about their background quickly and seamlessly.

Characters using neopronouns that reflect elements of their character. Pronouns are a part of gender expression, just like clothing or hair, and just like clothing or hair, people could pick certain pronouns for reasons entirely unrelated to gender. For instance, a character who has been dehumanized a lot could use it/its pronouns, not for gender reasons, but to reclaim them from those who abused it.

On a similar note, a character might use gender-neutral pronouns not because they’re nonbinary, but because their native language doesn’t have gendered pronouns, so they’re more comfortable with gender-neutral ones. Or maybe they start out using gendered pronouns and then switch to using gender-neutral ones to help show them reconnecting with that aspect of their heritage.

Characters deciding to change their pronouns as a sign of an important moment in their character arc. (Pronouns can be an expression of A LOT more than gender, as explained in the above two points, and I’m sure you can probably come up with even more ideas than just those listed here.)

One character could go by pronouns that none of the other characters do, so the audience still get hints that it’s them even when they’re not mentioned by name.

Neopronouns are shorter than names, but theoretically, if you did it right, they could carry just as much symbolism, foreshadowing, and/or other meaning.

…for example, you could use different pronouns in different situations to tell something about that situation, or as some form of symbolism, though for the latter, you may wanna stick to neos to avoid playing into traditional gender stereotypes or otherwise potentially seeming like you’re making a point about male vs. female or binary vs. nonbinary genders. Neos don’t have the gendered connotations of she/her or he him, so they’re usually judged on the vibe of the sound.

In historical settings. Historical neopronouns exist! Or, in modern, real-life-or-close-to-it settings, you could have a character use older neopronouns to indicate that the character may have been a) around for a long time (maybe there’s some fantasy elements and they’re immortal?) and involved in the queer community for a long time b) really interested in history in general or queer history in particular. They don’t necessarily have to have these meanings, but still.

This is just scratching the surface. I’m tired of writers seeing nonbinary pronouns, especially neopronouns, as a roadblock or hassle, something that detracts from their work, or else something that is necessary solely for the sake of representation, rather than the potential valuable addition to the writer’s toolbox that they are.

I’m tired of the lack of representation not just because of the lack of representation in it of itself (though that is also a big issue; normalizing gender neutral language and neopronouns is very important and literature could go a long way to help with that), but also because it’s so clear to me that in refusing to use that representation, in declaring it “too hard to write with” or “too confusing,” writers are cutting themselves off from a vast array of fascinating narrative opportunities. If you don’t know how to use them, great! It’s never too late to learn, and who knows, you (or your readers) might end up using the knowledge you learn in real life! I’m sure you weren’t born knowing how proper sentence structure or dialogue formatting works either.

Your story doesn’t have to be about gender or have a deeper message about its role in society for non-standard pronouns to be something you can use. Let your dragon be referred to as ae/aer. Let your superhero switch between multiple sets of pronouns. Let your escaped lab experiment reclaim “it/its.” Let your characters go by an array of pronouns as wide as the distribution of their names.

You don’t have to explain. You don’t have to have an in-universe explanation, not if you don’t want one. Your reader should be able to figure it out on their own, and like with most symbolism, explaining could detract from its power unless it’s a specific focus. At the end of the day, pronouns are just words, and as a writer, words are your tools to use as you see fit. Some might carry certain historical or real world baggage, but that’s true outside of just pronouns; just do some research, handle it as respectfully as you can, and don’t let it stop you from exploring this whole entire aspect of the language you use.

120 notes - Posted January 10, 2022

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[thesoulspulse]

Danny Phantom Randomness (Cranky Fruitloop)

Recently I finished the upcoming chapter for “Ghost In The Machine” and sent it off to my friend @dp-marvel94​ to beta read, but there’s something I wanted to mention that we touched on real quick. See, I got a little stuck with this chapter since Season 3 Vlad is...well he’s got issues.

Like, a LOT of issues...

Sorry for the low quality of this screenshot but daaaang, just look at that furious expression! He is totally livid and is willing to do anything to get his way. Not that Vlad wasn’t always like this, but he’s never been quite this petty, ruthless, not to mention careless as he is the moment this season starts.

To me, Vlad was always the kind of guy that made sure he had a back up plan. He's a clever businessman who knows how to pull the strings and how to indirectly manipulate others. And Vlad even knew when not to directly mess with a ghost more powerful than himself, not unless he knew how to one-up them in the end as seen when he uses Danny and Valerie to topple the Ghost King and make some sort of deal with the Fright Knight, which by the way, we NEVER FIND OUT WHAT IT WAS!!!

Anyways, my personal headcanon is that after the failed cloning incident, Vlad had totally given up on trying to make Danny his son, and to some extent even given up on winning over Maddie too for the time being. All he cared about after Danny got his castle destroyed was causing his young rival the maximum amount of pain and suffering he could and doing whatever it took to get what he does want, which for some reason becomes ultimate power. However, nothing about his character said he wanted to rule the world, Vlad wanted love, and he was obsessed with the idea of a perfect love from Danny and Maddie and wanted to ‘take what was rightfully his away from the man who he blames for ruining his life.’

Apart from ‘taking’ Maddie though, what did Jack really do to ruin it part from make one innocent mistake with a diet cola since Vlad obviously recovered from the accident no worse for wear after a few years despite looking twice his age with the silver hair? Besides, Vlad probably wasn’t allowed to have visitors since his condition was radioactive as far as the doctors were concerned. I mean, being abandoned sucks, believe me, I know that from a recent experience myself, but once he got out of the hospital he could have just as easily reached out to his friends too and got answers from them about why they never visited instead of assuming the worse.

I dunno, I’ve talked about this before and it just strikes me that Vlad is extra bad in this season because he’s given into his hatred not only towards Jack, but at Danny too. He hates them both. And he’s definitely crossed the line several times in huge ways since the cloning thing. Guess that’s why it’s an interesting challenge still trying to give him a redemption arc through my Danny Program AU since he’s in this very unique position of seeing the side of Vlad original Danny never got to see since Vlad was too busy being evil and making his life difficult out of pure spite.

I miss the good old days when Vlad was still indirectly mentoring Danny...

That’s why it hurt so much seeing them bonding over some videogames together and Vlad makes an off-handed comment about still caring for Danny, but then things go south as usual and nothing changes since they’re both just being total brats to each other. Yes, even Danny since he could have avoided a lot of this by not stooping to Vlad’s level.

So yeah, that’s all I wanted to say!