#who needs gifsets when you have video edits

[snowfuls]

the president's favourite grandchildren | chemtrails over the country club.

featuring @incaensio

[kazoo-world]

okay. i debated not posting this because I was worried I’d get death threats (that says a lot doesn’t it) but it needs to be said, because its upsetting me.

a woman who publicly says she feels very sane and has “never been to therapy” and who breaks up with her boyfriend in part because he can’t just “”get over”” his depression to love her the way she wants/needs does not.

I repeat, does not.

get to use the imagery she did in her fortnight video.

I’ve been seeing gifsets and screenshots all day of her chained to a bed but ~aesthetic~ and being fed a pill after a cheeky side eye and strapped to a glamourfied ECT machine and no one has said anything about it so I will. those images are genuinely triggering for me.

people have been restrained, forcefed pills, and given electroconvulsive therapy or subjected to the electric chair for severe mental illness against their will. these are not fun props anyone gets to throw around to express that they feel depressed or in a “manic phase” or like they were “raised in an asylum.”

she doesn’t know how a real asylum fried my grandmother’s brain or real cops restrained me because I was psychotic and manic. she doesn’t know what it feels like to be dehumanised that way.

do better. demand she do better, too.

edit: I say that this content is triggering to say that it causes real harm. I do still have a responsibility to myself to curate an internet experience for myself. this does not negate her responsibility to avoid replicating harmful tropes in art which is deeply influential. she does not get to co-opt institutionalization or psychiatric violence as a romanticized aesthetic or as a metaphor because real people like myself have suffered greatly under the things she is representing as glamorous or cool. institutionalization silences and violates mentally ill people in a way that marginalizes them, and that experience should be treated with sensitivity and care rather than being commodified to reduce stigma. if she had experienced these things, I might feel differently, but other ableist content on the record and her statements on her life and art indicate otherwise. she is a woman with immense privilege and power and should not be using that privilege and power to punch down on mental illness.

edit 2: I want you all to know I have seen your criticism. I will not edit the post but I do respect that she has had mental health struggles since that outdated quote. That is my mistake, I own that. My apologies.

However, mental health struggles =/ experience with psychiatric violence. Experiences of mental illness are heterogenous. Aestheticizing, romanticizing, and glamourizing mental hospitals is straight up gross regardless of your experience with mental illness. It’s tasteless and offensive.

I do understand metaphors. I think that her calling her life an asylum as a metaphor is in poor taste. I think her representing her relationship struggles with the imagery of a mental institution is insensitive given the impacts that real asylums and mental hospitals have had on my life and the lives of many others like me, so I had to say something about it.

It’s ableist to assume that critics of your fav “can’t read”, “don’t understand a metaphor” or “don’t have brains” when they clearly demonstrate that they are thinking critically. Do better.

[littlespoonevan]

rewatching s1 this time around has actually left me sooooo fascinated by buck and abby's relationship??????? bc what we know of it in its aftermath is actually completely visible on screen during the season???

in episode 6 when abby is talking to carla about a potential valentines day date with buck she outright says she's fine with him being a boytoy and it just being something casual so she can feel good in herself again and is almost complaining that buck is taking it so seriously by trying to go slow. and the thing is, i don't think her stance on that ever changes???????

she absolutely cares about him and appreciates him for everything he does for her (both in helping support her with her mom and what he does in helping her find her way back to herself) but i don't think she ever really wanted or needed him to be more than that????

on the flipside, you have buck who's experiencing feelings he's never felt before and is so totally overwhelmed by this woman who's making him realise real connection is possible and it feels a million times better than the way he's vied for people's attention before. and there's something a little heartbreaking in the way he questions if he's ready for it to be something real. because bobby encourages him to step into the relationship fully and in the end he does do that

but abby doesn't really want him to???

so you have buck, fully committed and ready to be the partner he thinks abby needs, and abby, who is so completely unable to be that partner in return because she wants to navigate the next stage of her life alone

and aksdjfh it's just!!!! so!!!!! interesting!!!!!!!!! and i am once again BEGGING someone to make a gifset/video/edit/anything for them with reckless driving by lizzy mcalpine

[whumpgifathon]

Welcome to a brand new monthly whump challenge!!

I'm Ace and I run the blog @aceofwhump. I've been making gifs now for 10 years and I've been participating in the various whump community challenges as a gifmaker for 5 years. Lately I've been thinking about how nice it would be to have a challenge made just for gifmakers and then it occurred to me. I can make one myself! So here it is! My very own whump gifmakers challenge.

Whump Gifathon is a brand new monthly challenge for all gifmakers/visual artists and anyone who has ever wanted to give gif making a try. The event runs during August and will have 31 days of prompts that will hopefully be the perfect inspiration for all my fellow visual artists!

Rules:

All gifs posted must be made by you. Do not just post gifs using the gif keyboard and claim them as yours and do not repost other people’s gifs. No AI-generated content please.

Various mediums are welcome! So long as the visual art aspect is the focus you can make whatever you want. Yes this is primarily a gifmaking challenge so everything is geared towards that but any visual art is welcome. If you draw, make moodboards, edits, videos, etc you’re welcome to participate!

You can use the prompts however you like. There is no wrong way to use a prompt. Feel free to interpret them however you wish. If you think it counts as whump? It's whump! Make it! Angst, comfort, emotional whump, small things, big things, it all counts so no need to over think it.

Please try to include the show/movie title, character names, and episode number (if applicable) somewhere either in your tags or in the post caption. This way anyone interested in watching it can find it easily.

Tag all potential triggers (things like emeto, gore, nsfw, blood, eye whump, rape/noncon, etc.) When in doubt, tag it.

Tags to use when posting so I can find your ppst: #whumpedit, #whumpgifathon, #whump gifs

An example of a way you can caption your gifsets:

@whumpgifathon | Day #: "prompt description"

Show/Movie title, episode number, character name

This is a relaxed event!!! I just want to offer my fellow visual artists some inspiring prompts and an opportunity to have some fun. So sit back, relax, and have fun!

Prompts will be posted soon!! Keep your eyes peeled!

[jovenshires]

hey gang!

i've been thinking, and i think it's about time i take a tiny, teeny lil hiatus. just wanted to let you know i'll be gone for a lil while (hopefully a week+ depending on how it goes). this is NOT because of any of you - in fact i am going to miss you all dearly. just think i need a bit of a mental health reset luvs.

i will have my queue running - i've upped the time and number of posts as well so it will run throughout my normal hours here - and i have content (incorrect tweets, some video edits, gifsets, etc.) lined up until. like may so don't worry about that snkjfk (i won't be gone for that long prommy i just do a lot of content prep). i'll also be watching smosh every day as per usual, and still working on stuff while im gone!! i think this'll be a really great opportunity to get some work done - i have so many fics and passion projects lined up that im really excited about, so hopefully i'll get to finish those in the meantime and i may be back to post them <3 at the very least i'll be back by valentines day for the smoshblr exchange!!

i won't be checking my notifs, the smosh tag, or anything like that. if you want me to see smth in the meantime, hit me with a tag or a dm and i promise i'll see it when i get back. my askbox is still open but i'm afraid i probably won't be answering anything for the time being. if you're an anon who sends me asks - please please please keep sending them to me. truly you have no idea how much i enjoy our silly lil daily chats, they mean the world to me. i will be back to answer them as soon as i feel like im ready <3 and as for dms, i will answer them once i come back, but if you wanna talk to me urgently, i have discord/snapchat/whatsapp/etc where you can find me if you want to hmu for those <3 even if we've never spoken before!! i don't bite and i love friends prommy. i'll def be around for the rest of the day if you want to get my info!

like i said, i'll be around if anyone has any burning questions or wants to chat. i love you all, keep going strong, and be good while i'm gone. in my honor, please follow my golden rules: be kind to one another, make lots of silly goofy content, and, most importantly, do whatever you want forever. love ya! :)

[sentientsky]

hi HELLO you know itwtv, and i keep seeing “claudia is my coven” gifsets which are VERY MOVING but i have no clue what’s happening there?? i thought asking you may be a good idea? could you perhaps give me the rundown👀?

hi laurel!!!! quick question. are you in my house? cause i was in the middle of screen recording that scene for an edit when i got this ask. how. anyway, YES, i would be delighted to give u a run down!

warning: major spoilers for iwtv s2 ahead! (also tw for a tiny bit of blood)

First and foremost, here's the scene itself:

Apologies for the lack of subtitles. I forgot to record it with subtitles, so have a copy of the transcript instead:

SANTIAGO: Madeleine Eparvier rise! The choice is yours. Will you renounce the accused you sit with and join our coven? [sounds of yelling from the crowd. claudia and madeleine gaze at one another, raw with terror. claudia nods, ever so slightly. madeleine turns back to the audience] MADELEINE: I am the vampire Madeleine Eparvier. And my immortal companion is Claudia. My coven is Claudia.

So, let me provide a bit of context. Claudia is a 47-year-old vampire. She was turned in the early 1900's, not of her own volition, but instead to satiate another vampire's need for humanity and absolution. Her entire life, she's been exposed to violence, stripped of her autonomy, and abandoned and betrayed by those who were supposed to protect her. Her own surrogate father (Louis, the man sitting to her left in the video) chose his partner over her again and again. In short, she's never truly had someone in her corner.

The redheaded woman is Madeleine. She's a dressmaker in Paris, and at this point, she was just recently turned into a vampire by Louis. Prior to becoming a vampire, she forged a connection with Claudia, and eventually chose to become her immortal companion (which is like. a big deal in the vampire world). She chose Claudia, without judgement or fear or hesitation.

Okay, back to the scene itself!

There's a coven belonging to Armand (a 500-year-old vampire and the lover at the time of Louis) that works as a theater troupe performing (mostly) vampire-themed plays. They invite people up on stage and pretend it's all part of the act when they kill and drain the humans in front of an audience. In this case, Claudia, Madeleine, and Louis have all been forced onto the stage in a really fucked up execution/trial thing. There's a lotttt of racism involved, with the inclusion of racist caricatures, and the overall "play" mirroring a Jim Crow-era lynching (there's more, but those are the main parts).

Claudia, in the eyes of the coven, is irredeemable by virtue of her age (she was 14 when she was turned, which isn't allowed) and other "crimes". She's declared guilty and sentenced to death.

Madeleine, however, is granted the oppourtunity to abandon Claudia and instead join ye olde vampire theater troupe.

The thing that fucks me up so much is the fact that Claudia expects to be left behind. You can see it in her face that she believes it's a foregone conclusion; she's been abandoned so many times that it's second nature to feel that preemptive ache of loss. She even nods at Madeleine, telling her to save herself. Instead, Madeleine refuses to leave her side, choosing to be executed alongside Claudia. Because Claudia is her coven. She's her sacred pact. In conclusion, I am deeply unwell and need to see Claudia tear people to shreds with her bare hands.

[911buddieweek]

Hi everyone! I saw that there hasn't been a Buddie Week in a few years and that the account hosting this hasn't been active. I tried to get in contact but they never responded. Weeks dedicated to ships were always my favorites in different fandoms, so I decided, why not try to host it myself?

I am aware this can me stressful to do on my own, but I am giving it a chance! Besides, it'll be in 2024 so I'll have time to prepare.

That said, I want to ask YOU for some help figure out when this week should take place. This will happen in different polls.

First: today (November 3rd) this post will contain the first poll which season this week should be held:

Based on which season has the most votes, I will do another poll which month would be your favorite choice (unless December wins). Then when a month is chosen, there will be a poll which week should be used.

I might also do a poll which form of the week. Personally I use Monday-Sunday, but I know there are also people who use Sunday as the first day of the week.

Once we have chosen a week, we can start doing prompts! A form will be up for several weeks where you can suggest prompts. Then the most sent + my own favorites get put in a new form where you can vote.

There will be a poll to see if you want alternate prompts, multiple prompts a day to choose from, like @whumptober does for their events, or only 7 promps - 1 for each day. Then based on the amount of prompts needed, the ones with the most votes will be put in Buddie Week 2024.

Buddie week is for everyone!

You can do anything: Fics, gifsets, collages, video editing, picture editing, podcasts, playlists, podfics, art, poems. Whatever you want to create, you can do it!

EXCEPT THE USE OF AI IS FORBIDDEN!

AI technology steals from fellow artists and therefore it is against the rules to use AI to create something for Buddie Week.

I hope this is all the information you need to get excited! And I really hope to see people join to celebrate Buddie for a week!

Please share! You have my permission to share this post on other media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Discord, anything. I hope to reach as many people as I can!

[1016week]

1016 Week 2023!

Hello and happy Monza weekend, fellow Piarlies! ❤️💙 It's with great love and excitement that we're sharing with you the idea behind our next Pierre/Charles event: 1016 Week! We chose Monza to do the grand reveal because we couldn't think of any place that has better Piarles history - and that's what this fanweek is going to be all about. Celebrating Piarles, and all their gorgeous history, and everything that they are. ❤️

You can find all the details and arrangements for the event below the cut! <3

How is this event going to work?

If you've ever participated in a ship week/fanweek before, then this will work exactly the same as that! We've created a list of seven Piarles-themed prompts, one for each day of the event, and the idea is that everyone creates a little something inspired by each prompt to post on its specific day.

1016 Week will run from the 10th to the 16th (🥰) October 2023. Creation time starts as soon as you've got your prompts - which is to say, as soon as you finish reading this post!

We'd like this to be a fun and stress-free challenge for everyone, so we've tried to build in plenty of creation time for you all. Furthermore, we will not be enforcing deadlines very strictly at all - so if you do happen to miss a day or two, absolutely no worries! We will keep reblogging 1016 Week content to this blog right through to the end of the year. 💙

What kinds of content can I create for this event?

Any and all types of creative fanwork - fic, art, gifsets, photo edits, video edits, playlists and more - are welcomed in this fanweek! The only criterion is that its main focus must be the relationship between Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc.

Furthermore, there are no content restrictions for this challenge - NSFW, dark, or otherwise uncomfortable topics are accepted. However, we require any such content to be clearly identified in your title/summary/blurb and placed under a read-more cut, so that those who aren’t comfortable with seeing it can avoid it.

Prompts are general, and creators are free to interpret them however you want! As long as it's about Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc, and has something of the prompt's general theme in it, anything goes. ❤️

Do I have to complete all 7 days to be allowed to participate?

Not at all! You are free to complete as few or as many of the prompts as you want, and you can submit as many or as few creations per day as the muse inspires. 😁

When you've finished your creation and you're ready to share it with the Pierre/Charles world, @ this blog and use #1016 week 2023 in your first five tags so we can find and reblog your work. Don't forget to add what day of the prompt week your creation is fulfilling!

For our writers and artists who'd like to add your work to AO3: we've created an AO3 Collection where you can post all your creations for this event! You can find it on the Archive as 1016 Week 2023 (1016Week_2023). Be sure to post to Tumblr as well, because we'll be reblogging all 1016week content to this blog too! 💙

Where and how do I sign up?

This is a super low-pressure event, so there's no need to worry about an official sign-up! You can just like or reblog this post (& give this blog a follow!) to show your support <3

It's our honour and pleasure to host this fanweek over at the Calamars Club Discord server. If you're not a part of the server and you'd like to be, just message a mod for the invite link. Your mods for this event are the epic team of @singsweetmelodies, @boxboxbrioche, @welightitup, @duquesademiel, @wolfiemcwolferson and @river-ocean!

@ Pierre/Charles shippers across Tumblr and AO3: we hope that this event will make you smile this September and October <333 We are so excited to share this with you all! ❤️💙

[forcebookish]

a lot of intimate details of topmew's relationship were strangely out of frame. like, when top touches mew's thigh in episode one:

and you can hear mew touch top's thigh here:

i do think it lends to the realism of their relationship, because it doesn't have a lot of those "om G they did something GAY" moments that you see in a lot of BLs. they just act like a couple (or flirting, in the case for episode one), and we're all just witness to that. and maybe that's why they don't sit well with a lot of BL veterans and BNFs, because so little of their relationship is played up for the camera.

like a lot of the show, their love scenes are mostly shot hand-held (both steady and shaky cam), and this scene

is shot from behind a wall, at a distance, and it has this voyeuristic quality to it - but not in a sinister way, because they're at a party. in this scene, it's as if we're partygoers who happen to come across this quiet moment of raw intimacy.

it all tells us that these are stolen moments of something real.

(side-note: i'm not comparing this with the other couples in the series. i don't care enough about them to double check if their scenes are shot similarly lmao i only remember how different the choreography was)

that being said, even in moments where the POINT was that they were holding hands, where the emphasis of the shot should have been on their hands, it's not.

which idk maybe it was something with the dp, limited time/shots, or editing. i think the above video was presented how it was intended (since it's so natural, who even knows if book was directed to do that or if it was his own choice), but in the first episode, you'd think it'd be kind of a big deal? since so much of the scene is about top hitting on mew? like, top does it when he says that he'll go to get more drinks and mew nods kinda shyly. you'd think that there would be some emphasis on the fact that he came on that strong - BEFORE he found out that mew was a virgin. maybe they never shot another angle where it was obvious what he was doing, but whether it didn't exist or was edited out, it still feels like a way that production sabotaged them as a ship lol

there was a lot of talk about only friends changing the bl industry and unfortunately i think the main takeaway is going to be that subtlety is lost on its audience 🙃

(that's not me saying that the subtle approach to the aforementioned ep1 scene was the right approach, since MOST viewers didn't notice it and the ones who did it probably took multiple watches or someone in the fandom literally pointing it out - i think i needed to have it pointed out iirc. showing top coming on to mew isn't spelling it out for the audience, it's enriching the story...)

ANYWAY, this was inspired by me wanting to make a gifset of topmew holding hands but it was really annoying because most of the shots their hands are out of frame >:(

[aceofwhump]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To set speed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This button to switch from frames to timeline:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the rest of my settings:

After that you can click save.

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

[ycmalholidayexchange]

❄️🎁❄️You Could Make a Life Holiday Fanwork Exchange 2023❄️🎁❄️

Hello!

Tell your friends, your family, your coworkers: Hockey is coming back (soon-ish), and so is the greatest of fandom traditions. Whether you're old or new here, welcome to You Could Make a Life Holiday Fanwork Exchange.

Once again, Ana and Pyry are working together to organise the event. We hope to see you all participate!

The format will be the same as years prior:

❄️What is this?

Just a pretty normal and chill fandom exchange to celebrate the holidays. In short, you create something for another fan and get something in return!

Anyone in the You Could Make a Life fandom can participate. You can check the wrap-up posts for 2019, 2020, and 2022, or check this blog's latest posts in 2021 if you want to have an idea of what people have previously created.

❄️What can I make/get?

The idea is to:

write fic of at least 1000 words; or

make 1 piece of fanart; or

make 1 playlist of at least 11 songs with a cover; or

make 1 gifset; or

create a short video edit (minimum 30 seconds); or

one complete and edited podfic of a text that is originally at least 1000 words;

one complete and edited podfic of at least 10 minutes.

You can specify whether you prefer fic and/or art when you sign up!

❄️ Why did you add videos and podfic as fanworks?

We have noticed a resurgence of the fanvid as a form of fanwork in recent years (due to fandom's shift to platforms such as Twitter, Instagram or Tiktok). We want this event to be open to as many people as possible, so we thought maybe there are some ycmal fans who are also great video editors! We still haven't received any video submissions, but this may be the year!

Podfic was a request last year and we think it worked pretty well, so it's coming back.

❄️What am I allowed to create/request?

Any pairing, theme and rating are allowed. However, since this universe is huge, please be flexible and include as many things you like as possible in the request and the offer. If you are only willing to receive an Owen/Jake time-travelling farmers AU, we may not be able to find you a suitable match! We may contact you if, for any reason, it’s impossible for us to find a match for you and we need you to think of more options.

❄️I don't understand podfic, tell me more.

It means somebody will record an audio version of a fic. If you are interested in receiving a podfic, you will be able to add links to works you'd like to have in that format (please make sure the author allows for this type of transformative work), or you could request any of your own fics.

❄️Timeline

Sign-ups are open now and end on October 4th 3pm EST.

After that, we will start matching people and you will be notified as soon as possible of the person you have been assigned.

By November 30th, we will be emailing you to confirm that you are still participating. If for some reason you cannot participate any more, please notify us as soon as possible, so that we can make sure we find a pinch-hitter.

The works will be posted between December 15th and 31st, in whatever platform best suits your work. Please make sure you inform us (tagging this blog, for instance, or via ask box/email) and the recipient. Everything will be shared in this blog.

❄️Ok this sounds cool, how do I sign up?

Just fill in this form! Please read the sections carefully since we have changed some wording/formatting things. And don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions or comments :)

Thanks!

-Pyry & Ana

[mndvx]

Sorry if you’ve answered this question before, but how do you make your gifs?

With an outdated version of photoshop and a lot of patience 😤 my messy process under the cut

let's say i have this movie downloaded in .mp4 i open it in windows movie maker - or any other software that lets you do quick and easy edits and whatnot but me i use wmm even tho it's obsolete i knoooow leave me alone - cut the scene i want to gif out and save it into this tiny little file

then i open photoshop and go into import > video frames into layers (i may be a little bit off in how things are called on PS in english, but they should be in the same places anyway)

this little popup will open

since my file is exclusively the thing i want to gif i don't need to bother with the little arrow-ish things underneath the video player, they're there if you need to shorten your thing or like cut into it.

this bit here needs to be checked like this, it'll set up the gif animation or whatever. so yeah then click Ok

bim bam boom photoshop will open like this

big scary image with many tiny scary images, so first of all what i do is get on the cropping tool

this will show up in the toolbar up top

and in there you set the dimensions of the gif, 1 gif in a gifset that takes up the whole post has to be 540px wide for 2 gif next to each other it's 268px wide and i can't remember 3 by 3 but i never do that so whatever who cares.

once you've set up the dimensions you want, you got this grid thing to move around and set however you want it to be

and then you wait as it painstakingly takes its time to do it

boom! it's done!

so that's your gif raw and unprepared without any filters or whatever, no length, no speed, nothing!

down there you've got the frames of the gif, depending how long is it'll be either a lot or very very short, in this case it's 277 frames, so already you know it's not gonna be just one gif but probably two or three - which i knew btw that's on purpose!!

first thing i do when all the cropping and setting up is done is scroll all the way through the frames to see if there's a bit that won't make it into the gif, and here, there is

these last four frames show a different bit of the scene because i cut shit very messily and don't check before opening photoshop but you know! trust the process! so make sure to select the unwanted bunch and delete them

so now hurray the gif is 273 frames and it's only the one scene i want

and now the fun not fun starts!

to the right you got these, the layers

so you gotta scroll all the way up and NOT forget to click on the very last layer before you start playing around with filters and all that

this little guy right here is my bestien he's the only one i use when editing gifs, fuck everybody else on that row. when making gifs i mostly just use a combination of those three things, brightness/contrast, vibrancy and photo filters

so anyway, let's fool around with those little things and make a gif (i realize now the scene is very dark and it will look very ugly but never mind! we carry on) so there a bunch of random settings added - you gotta make sure they are all the way on top of everything or else they just won't appear on every single frame

what i do then is probably very stupid and there's probably a better way to do it, but MY PROCESS, so i divide the amount of frames i've got by the number of gifs i want to make in a set, so 273/3 that's 91 (thank you google), so we look back down at the frames

and then scroll aaaaaalllll the way back to frame 91 (if you hold shift and use the wheel it'll be much faster) and while still holding shift pressed down click on frame 92

that will select every frame from the last to that and we delete that shit

so now we only have 91 frames and that's one gif. so let's save it! but wait, no you forgot to do something! see the 0.03s? that's the gif speed or whatever, idk how it works but 0.03s is too fast, me i usually use 0.05s so what you do next is select every one of those frames you've got left and click the little pointing down arrow, that'll open that

click Other... and then set it as the speed you want

ok so your gif is at the correct speed NOW you can save it so it's file > export > save for web

this new popup will appear

currently as of 2024 gifs can't be bigger than 10Mb/Mo, this one is 4mo

so we're good we're fine. so then you just click save, name the file whatever you want and VOILAAAA, a djeef!

(and then undo the delete and repeat everything for the other two gifs you'd want to make in that set)

[frecklystars]

Wow, 32 asks. Thank you guys so much 😭😭 last night was one of the worst shifts I ever had at work. I feel like i keep reverting back to a year ago when everything was fresh. it's been extraordinarily difficult the past couple of months but it always eases the ache when I read nice messages. it genuinely calms me down a lot when other people tell me it's gonna be ok. so thank you to everyone who took the time to do that for me ;-;

I'm gonna be honest, I feel super hopeless. I am not getting joy from anything right now. Drawing, socializing, watching movies, listening to music, I'm feeling *absolutely nothing*. I am triggered by the SMALLEST fucking things that I thought I was getting better at handling. I'm having trouble wearing skirts again. I'm flinching around the color pink when I was doing SO much better with it. For the last nine days, I haven't gone three hours without having a panic attack. I'm not sleeping. My flashbacks are lasting longer. I'm having out of body experiences again for the first time in almost a year. I feel so hopeless. I told myself one year ago "hey I feel like I'm dying right now my ptsd is so fucking bad but! hey! one year from now, I'll feel better! this will feel so far away from me!" but I don't. I don't feel better. I don't think it's possible to feel better bc I'm too broken. It's been over a year and I don't feel like it's possible for me to make progress.

My Barbie/Ken anniversary is coming up and I was excited for the first couple of weeks, but right now I just... feel absolutely nothing. I am so, so, so severely depressed and my anxiety is getting worse every day. I need help out of my unsafe situation so fucking bad dude it's just gonna kill me. I'm so scared this whole thing is gonna genuinely kill me. I wish I could talk about it but I don't want to scare people but at the same time, it's so bad and it's weighing on me so heavily and I am so fuckign tired of dealing with this every single day

I don't know if I'm gonna go offline or not, bc my problem isn't even online. so... I don't see how being offline would help much. I just feel like I'm supposed to do SOMETHING, literally ANYTHING to feel something. Going offline last time made me feel significantly worse, so maybe that shouldn't be my next step. But I feel nothing when I'm blogging right now. I tried making a Jacob edit the other day and I felt no joy. I want to be filling up my queue for the 21st, all of my Barbie and Ken photos and gifsets. I should be writing Barbie and Ken love notes. I should be making video edits again! but I feel nothing!!! This is the one and only anniversary that actually matters to me this year - sorry to the other 12 Ryan F/Os who have anniversaries but THIS ONE is THE most important one, because these two characters are the F/Os that have helped me the most with my abuse trauma/cptsd. They're the whole reason why I started self shipping again. I want to celebrate that. I want to be excited about it. I am just so fucking numb.

I NEED to feel something for this anniversary, I miss celebrating F/O anniversaries! I don't get to do that anymore since self shipping was ruined for me! Since my main F/Os were ruined for me! I deserve to have a good time with my new F/Os!! I am a good person and I am kind despite all the bullshit I've been through and I work really hard to try to heal from shit! I try to stay positive and I try to help people and I!!! Deserve!! To have a day where I feel good with my F/Os without reliving every single horrifying vile thing that someone did to me! but I feel so empty right now and it hurts! I was excited a couple of weeks ago when I was planning all the activities i was gonna do on the 21st, like a restaurant and a movie and baking and throwing a party with my friends, but now?? Nothing. Absolutely NOTHING in my heart. I feel so goddamn empty. I am so depressed. I really really feel like I can't get better. It's been over a year and I am incapable of healing from my trauma and I don't know what to do about it. I am trying so many things to heal!! I'm going walking, I'm eating way healthier and cutting sugar to see if that helps clear my head a bit more, I'm getting sun, I'm drinking so much water, I'm exercising, I've cut my screen time significantly and reading more often, I'm hanging out with my friends as much as I can, I am trying everything in the book and I feel like a zombie just sitting here and rotting to death, going through the motions and reliving my trauma in my head over and over and over and over and over and over again and I can't get any fucking peace. It's like everybody in the world is living their days while the planet is spinning but I am stuck in the same spot reliving the most horrific bullshit imaginable over and over and over. I feel like I've lost almost 2 years of my life to trauma. I don't feel like I've aged, I feel like everything happened yesterday. I feel like I'm stuck in one spot while everybody else is walking forward and I can't move.

Sorry to ramble I didn't mean to turn this into a vent post but idk what else to do. I don't know if I should go offline on my actual anniversary or maybe a couple of days leading up to it?? Or maybe I'm supposed to BE online and blog about the F/Os to see if that helps me feel better?? Being offline made me feel worse. But being online isn't helping me either. Dude I don't fucking know. I need to work on some crafts or something. I need to make a BarbieLand diorama and paint it. I'm gonna bake heart shaped cookies for the first time this weekend. I'm gonna invite my friends over and we're gonna have a party on Sunday and watch the Barbie movie together. I don't know what else to do but I have to just... keep trying I guess even though I feel nothing while doing these things, it's better than doing nothing

If anyone has advice or something, it's more than welcome. Or even just a "wow, that's rough, buddy". I'm sorry for being negative, I try to remain positive on this hellsite but it's so hard right now. Thank you again to everyone who wrote me a nice message last night when I was hurting. I'm sorry I'm gonna probably be asking for encouraging messages a few more times in the next few weeks bc supportive messages are the only things that have been effectively (affectively?) helping me lately

[polinbigbang]

Event Rules

General

Spread kindness and positivity.  Don’t be rude, condescending, hurtful, etc.  There is no reason to put someone down within this event.

Anyone who needs to drop out should let the mods know ASAP via tumblr at polinbigbang, email at polinbigbang@gmail.com, or direct message to a server mod on discord.

Fics and artwork being submitted must be new (to the public).  It is okay if you post (small) previews while working on the fic or artwork, but they must not have been posted anywhere prior to the event, or during the event.

Fics

There are three types of bangs for this event: bings, bangs, and booms.  Bings fics are fics between 5k-10k.  Bang fics are fics between 10k-20k.  Boom fics are any fics 20k and above.  The minimum word count for this event is 5k.

RPF (real person fiction) and incest are not allowed in this event.  While we understand there are many out there who write both, we would prefer to leave those fics unattached from this particular event.

The main ship for this event must be Polin. There are no limits on genres, tropes, or universes.  Write to your heart’s content!

Authors can have their work beta-read by someone of their choosing before their posting date.

Works must be labeled with triggers and tagged appropriately.

Works must be posted to AO3.

Art

You must create at least one piece of art for bings and bangs and two pieces for booms, in any medium you deem fit.

Playlists will not be accepted as an official piece of art, but may be included.

Examples of art include hand drawn or digital art, gifsets, photo manipulations, original songs, and video edits.

Please make sure your art is relevant to your associated fic.

White-washing will not be tolerated.  Please be respectful of BIPOC when creating your art.

[unrealisticlea]

can you share bobby and buck father and son moments? i miss them :(

Sadly, I’m absolutely talentless and I can’t make gifs or edits but let me share with you my favourite sources for when I’m missing the best father-son duo on tv:

This video: https://youtu.be/5FD5VztzgOk

These gifsets:

Bobby calling Buck kid:

All their moments in 6x11 aka the reasons that’s my favourite episode. The entire episode is a tribute to Buck and Bobby relationship. It’s beautiful. I’ve already watched it so many times. Couldn’t choose the best scene to save my life:

Why Buck’s last name should be Nash:

Parallel with the other best father-son relationship on tv:

A dad who’s always there when his son needs him:

Season 1 is like the best season when it comes to Buck and Bobby scenes:

He really saw him and said “him. I’m gonna adopt him.” like he was a lost puppy:

And Buck imprinted on him like a baby duck (god this scene is tattooed on my heart):

And the best scene of the show, where they CANONICALLY said “Yep. Buck is his son”

[scoobydoodean]

okay so first you proved yourself to be not only one of the funniest people in the supernatural fandom with your meme blog but also one of the most thoughtful with your more serious posts, then you've also made great video edits, then you revealed that you can also DRAW well, and now you're also making gifs? this is unfair you just keep revealing more things you can do. you could run this whole fandom by yourself if you wanted to (i'll be supporting you though!!!)

This is so sweet! Thank you so much lmao!

My gifs are VERY hit or miss and I would LOVE to learn how to color them, but I don’t want to get photoshop (FUCK Adobe) and all the other stuff I have tried felt so clunky. So I just use Giphy to make them. Reading some advice from far more talented and experienced people about changing the screen ratio for your gifs, and blowing the video up as much as possible when screen-capturing, then compressing within the app, has all been a HUGE game changer for me but I don’t have even a fraction of the talent that people who do gifsets regularly have so I very rarely make gifs. (Someone has usually already made way better ones than I ever could anyway before I’d get to it). Every so often I will try my hand at it because I have brainworms or smthg.

I used to draw CONSTANTLY as a kid/teen but actually hadn’t drawn in AGES and then recently wanted to do some jokes and decided to give it a whirl again. This is another area where there are people with FAR more talent than I will ever hone.

Idk tho my brain goes off into a completely different world and I abandon something I was working on or something I was learning to do then come back like 3 years later lol and I can never keep up with everything I would like to do and am sooo susceptible to needing instant gratification so like longer projects or things that are too tough just tend to slip away. 🙈 but as long as we are having fun that is all that matters!